Polymer based composite filament production for 3D printers

Today, the tasks loaded on the materials used in many areas are increasing day by day. Especially in living organisms, it is very important to expand the range of products used for therapeutic purposes or to produce new products. In order for a biomaterial placed in a living organism to function properly, it is desired to have more than one feature. Today, many of the products that fulfill the desired function in harmony with living organisms can be produced in 3D printers. With filaments consisting of more than one raw material to meet this need, parts with various geometric shapes can be produced in 3D printers. Thus, both the production cost is reduced and products with the desired properties can be obtained. Within the scope of this thesis, filaments were produced by extrusion method by mixing polylactic acid (PLA), hydroxyapatite (HA) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) materials with good biocompatibility in certain proportions to be used in 3D printers. Then, using these produced filaments, tensile samples in accordance with ISO 527-2 5A standard and 20x20x20 mm cube samples were printed with 3D printing parameters under 3D printing parameters such as printing temperature, border printing speed and internal filling speed. The rheological, morphological, physical, chemical and mechanical properties of the filaments produced by extrusion and the product obtained from the 3D printer were determined using ready-made filaments. It has been shown that natural HA can be used as an alternative to synthetic HA in tensile, dimensional, roughness, XRD, FTIR, SEM, EDX, DSC and TGA analyzes performed on the produced 3D printing samples. Dimensional deviations of 3D prints made with composite filaments were occurred 0.5-2%. In 3D printing samples of composites, the highest roughness value was 14.5 µm in X axis planes, 16.7 µm in Y axis planes and 14.2 µm in Z axis planes. According to DSC analysis, the glass transition of the composites was obtained at 68°C and the melting temperature around 165°C. According to the tensile analysis, tensile strength and breaking stress were obtained from a mixture of 95% PLA, 4% HA and 1% TiO2 with a maximum printing temperature of 220°C, a printing speed of 2880 mm/min. The maximum tensile was 62.4 N/mm2 and the elongation to break was 1.76 mm.