An Investigation into Thermal History and Its Correlation with Mechanical Properties of PA12 Parts Produced by Selective Laser Sintering Process

Thermal history is a key factor affecting mechanical properties of polymeric parts made by the selective laser sintering (SLS) process. In this research, the effect of thermal history on the mechanical properties of PA12 parts produced by the SLS process has been investigated. It is hypothesized that different cool-down methods (normal to very slow cooling) and built orientations, resulted from flat and edgewise layouts fabrication, could be influencing factors on the thermal history during the SLS process. The temperature changes at different points inside the powder bed were recorded during the fabrication of specimens. Afterward, the morphology of fabricated samples was examined using scanning electron microscopy. In addition, the degree of crystallinity and melting point of the parts were studied by differential scanning calorimetry analysis. It was found that the built orientation was more effective than the cooling methods on ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and elongation at break (EaB), so that UTS and EaB of the edgewise parts were 10%, 50% greater than the flat parts. On the other hand, the variation of crystallinity with cooling methods has been found to be much less than might be expected from the implemented various fabrication conditions. However, the applied slowest cool-down method slightly increased the edgewise parts crystallinity to 23%, compared to 19.2% for the normal cooled down samples, leading to greater UTS than the normal cooled specimens. The morphology observation of specimens fracture surfaces suggests that better mechanical performance of the edgewise samples is likely connected to fewer defects such as pores and un-melted powder particles remained in their cross sections due to experiencing higher temperature during fabrication. The work is relevant to attempts to build high mechanical performance parts by selective laser sintering.