Effects of the Post-Heat Treatment (Furnace Cooling) on the mechanical strength and dimensional accuracy of 3D printed PEEK in FDM method

Abstract

In recent decades, the production of polymeric parts using fused deposition modelling (FDM) has gained significant attention in the field, owing to its design flexibility, low cost, and time-efficient prototyping capabilities. Nevertheless, the inherently as-built limitation constrains the performance and challenges the broader applications. To address these limitations, the post-heat treatment or annealing has long been applied as one the critical post processing techniques for enhancing the materials properties and its performance. Despite the beneficial effects of the post-heat treatment on the mechanical strength, its effect on the long-term tribological performance with the involvement of complex structures are limited. While it is often assumed that improvements in mechanical properties lead to enhanced tribological performance, tribological properties are not intrinsic material properties. Instead, they are instead dependent strongly on the specific system and operating conditions in which a material or structure has to function. Among the tribological studies, the friction-induced vibration (FIV) is a critical issue, causing unwanted noise, wear, and potential system failure. Although the proposed active or passive controls can mitigate FIV, they inevitably increase the complexity in the design and implementation of the whole system. The re-entrant auxetic structure was employed in this study as the solution, characterized by Negative Poisson’s ratio (NPR). Notably, the performance of AM-fabricated parts remains highly sensitive to the external environmental stimuli, particularly temperature.