Large scale additive manufacturing of thermosetting material

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are these years experiencing a larger amount of traction in terms of applications due to an ever-increasing development of printing material properties. Properties, which in the past have been neglected, due to the manufacturing speed requirements, are now getting the attention needed to be widely accepted for industrial productions based additive manufacturing. While the thermos-plastic materials have been preferred in large scale plastic AM it leaves a gap in the AM toolbox, that is the thermos-setting materials, which typically provides cheaper, high fatigue, no creep properties required for many applications. This work will consider some of the requirements for the adaptation of low-cost thermosetting materials in material extrusion-based AM processes in the larger scale. Some of the key challenges found during this work are; the open process window criteria versus form stability of the printed material, the curing profile and its influence on the AM process and how to connect this to properly prepare geometries for thermo-setting printing on a larger scale.