3D printing of polypropylene using the fused filament fabrication technique

This work addresses the potential of polypropylene, neat (PP) and reinforced with short glass fibers (GRPP), as a candidate for the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)-based 3D printing technique. The entire production chain was evaluated, i.e., starting with PP and GRPP pellets, filaments were produced by extrusion and test samples were printed in different process conditions (different layers’ thicknesses, deposition orientation and infill) with the in-house produced filaments. This strategy enabled a true comparison between parts printed (FFF) with parts manufactured by compression molding (CM), using exactly the same grade of raw material.The authors acknowledge the funding by FCT with the reference projects UID/EEA/04436/2013 and UID/CTM/50025/2013, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 — Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) with the reference project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941.