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The use of additive manufacturing to rapidly test and evaluate solutions to engineering problems has been demonstrated. Selective laser sintering (SLS) is a subset of additive manufacturing that is particularly well suited to producing structural thin wall models and end use parts which can improve the ability to prototype and manufacture certain designs at a substantially lower cost and time compared to current methods. However, a more comprehensive understanding of the material properties of these parts is warranted. The presented research investigates the influence of print orientation and sample thickness on the material properties of printed SLS parts. This novel work involves holding a hatch pattern constant across SLS prints using polyamide 12 material to isolate the anisotropic effects of orientation and thickness. An evaluation of ultimate tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, strain at failure, yield strength, and Poisson's ratio, and scanning electron microscope fractography are conducted. Transverse strain and Poisson's ratio are a key aspect that provide insight into the feasibility of building numerical orthotropic models. These data are used to calculate the degree of anisotropy due to both thickness and orientation. The results support the future use of SLS printing and modeling of thin-walled structures, such as scaled structural ship modeling. The presented data provide guidance on the impact of print orientation and thickness that will aid in manufacturing structural parts with intentionally tuned material properties.
Slager et al. (Wed,) studied this question.