Tribological and Mechanical Behaviour of 3D Printed Polymeric Bearings

Abstract: Plastics contribute 2 GTons to the global carbon footprint, today, several countries have set targets to achieve carbon neutrality. Plastics, being a major contributor to global carbon footprint, would need to be reduced significantly from our daily life to achieve that or a way needs to be devised to recycle them. A big bottleneck in this process is to reduce the consumption of thermosetting plastics or to reduce the emissions associated with plastic and move towards economical and environmentally safe plastics having a longer lifespan and efficient recyclability. Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is the most commonly used 3D printed technology available today. Its applications range from production of prototypes to hollow shafts, and fully functional commercial components. This technology is revolutionary in a sense that it offers advantages such as cheaper raw materials, high degree of customizability, production in smaller batches at lower costs, decrease in material wastage, rapid prototyping, and complex geometry. A number of thermoplastic polymers can be used with FFF technology to produce parts, in addition research is on going to print materials not commonly used for FFF process. Polyoxymethylene (POM) could be a viable option for utilization as FFF basestock for the production of tribologically functional components. POM is an engineering thermoplastic that offers high resistance to wear, low friction, excellent impact resistance, and good chemical resistance. These properties render it suitable for production of gear wheels and low load bearings. It is currently processed using traditional manufacturing methods such as injection and compression moulding, while its printability has received very little attention in the openly available literature. An attempt has been made in this thesis to fill up this research gap by providing insight into POM filament quality, and the thermal, mechanical, and tribological behaviour of POM printed parts. The influence of overfill and layer height on the bulk properties of the printed samples, its play with counterface surface roughness and applied load has also been investigated.