Sensing Characteristics of 3D Printed Conductive Plastics - JRM MS DJS UW - Electronic Letters Submission.pdf (524.04 kB)
Strain sensing characteristics of 3D-printed conductive plastics
journal contribution
posted on 2018-03-26, 12:21 authored by Jack McGhee, Matt Sinclair, Darren SoutheeDarren Southee, Upul Wijayantha-Kahagala-GamageThis study electrically characterizes three types of commercially available conductive three-dimensional (3D) printing filament for use in 3D printed functional devices. The three plastics were carbon dispersed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), carbon dispersed polylactic acid (PLA) and graphene dispersed PLA. The method of 3D printing used was material extrusion and prints were made in both single and dual extrusion modes. The plastics were found to be piezoresistive, enabling them to be characterized as strain sensors. The electrical characteristics of these materials enabled the measurement of strain using low cost, readily available prototyping equipment and minimising the requirement for dedicated instrumentation components (e.g. Wheatstone bridges). Increasing the thickness of the plastics improved conductivity. However, this also decreased the reliability and reproducibility of strain sensor data due to a complex internal 3D structure. The recommendation for reliable use in prototyping and manufacturing is to print tracking under 0.8mm thickness, thus producing resistance measurements that are predictable and follow a linear regression up to R2 = 0.9991. A dual extruded 3D print was fabricated as a final demonstration. A force sensing resistor (FSR) interface was created. The final demonstration uses a PIC18F45K20 microcontroller to process sensor inputs, outputting to an alphanumeric LCD.
Funding
This research was part-funded through a Loughborough University Enabling Technologies Research Grant.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Chemistry
Published in
Electronics LettersCitation
MCGHEE, J.R. ... et al, 2018. Strain sensing characteristics of 3D-printed conductive plastics. Electronics Letters, 54 (9), pp. 570-572.Publisher
© The Institution of Engineering and TechnologyVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-03-07Publication date
2018Notes
This paper is a postprint of a paper submitted to and accepted for publication in Electronics Letters and is subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is available at the IET Digital Library.ISSN
0013-5194eISSN
1350-911XPublisher version
Language
- en