TY - EJOU AU - Matsuzaki, Ryosuke AU - Nakamura, Taishi AU - Yamagata, Yusuke AU - Todoroki, Akira AU - Ueda, Masahito AU - Hirano, Yoshiyasu TI - Design and Manufacturing of Composite Materials using 3D Printer T2 - The International Conference on Computational \& Experimental Engineering and Sciences PY - 2019 VL - 22 IS - 4 SN - 1933-2815 AB - When continuous carbon fiber composites are molded with a 3D printer, three-dimensional complex structure can be integrally molded, which leads to reduction of manufacturing time and cost. In addition, because the curved continuous fibers can be printed in a plane when the 3D printer is utilized, the design space and capability of 3D printed composites will drastically expand compared with using just straight fibers such as conventional prepreg. However, printing accuracy of composite materials may be affected uniquely by parameters such as number of fibers in tow, printing curvature, compaction pressure etc. In this study, we investigated to construct an appropriate design and manufacturing scheme for continuous fiber composite 3D printer. First, we developed a 3D printer capable of molding continuous carbon fiber composites based on fused deposition modeling. In this 3D printer, the thermoplastic resin filament containing continuous carbon fibers is melted inside the nozzle of the printer head and deposited on the flat table. We successfully demonstrated several complex structures that had curvature radius of lower than ten millimeters. We evaluated the printing accuracy by varying parameters such as the curvature of printing path trajectory. Finally, we also investigated the effects of using twisting fibers on the printing accuracy. KW - DO - 10.32604/icces.2019.05205