Preliminary Study on Mechanical Properties of 3D-Printed Carbon-PLA Filament with Different Printing Orientation for SUAV Wings Application

This article focuses on the production of tensile test (ASTM D638-03) specimens using fused deposition modelling technique as preliminary study for preparation of 3D-printed SUAV wings. Carbon-PLA (nylon 6/66 copolymer adding with 20% of carbon fiber) was used as 3D filament. There were 7 printing orientations: 0o, 15o, 30o, 45o, 60o, 75o, and 90o based on tensile axis with 3 specimens for each direction (21 specimens in total). Printing parameters were set using open-source slicing application CURA. It was found delamination and fracture outside the gauge length causing high deviation of the mechanical properties value. So, the result of the testing test seems like do not comply with theoretical aspect of relationship between fiber orientation and tensile properties of composite materials. Taking care of printing parameters and increasing the number of specimens has an opportunity to achieve high precision results since precise data is crucial as a starting point for the development of SUAV wings.