Adhesion of new thermoplastic materials printed on textile fabrics

Combining 3D printing, especially fused deposition modelling (FDM) as a material extrusion technique, with textile fabrics can lead to full-layer composites as well as partly reinforced textiles with different mechanical properties at different positions. While the combination of both techniques enables the production of new kinds of objects different from common fibre-reinforced matrices, the adhesion between both materials is still challenging and the subject of intense research activities. Besides well-known setup and printing parameters, such as the distance between nozzle and fabric or the extrusion temperature, material combinations, in particular, strongly influence the adhesion between 3D printed polymer and textile fabric. In this study, we investigate composites of woven fabrics from cotton (CO), polyester (PES) and a material blend (CO/PES) with newly developed thermoplastic materials for FDM printing, and show that depending on the FDM polymer, the adhesion can differ by a factor of more than four for different blends, comparing highest and lowest adhesion.