The Material Testing of Nanoparticle Doped 3D Printed ABS to Decrease Resistance and Create a Conductive Pathway

The technology to 3D print by low-cost fabrication has been around since the 1970’s. Thanks to one of its founding fathers, Scott Crump, as of 1989, it is possible to 3D print in low-cost fabricated layers to obtain a solid component. The demand for 3D printed products has only gone up since. Nickel, copper, carbon, and electric paint nanoparticles were bound to Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) using N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidinone (NMP) by fused deposition modeling (FDM). When ABS is doped with nanoparticles, conductive properties are introduced to the filament which can then be used for strain measurements. This study concluded: When compared to the other nanoparticles, nickel produced the lowest resistance when doped into the ABS. Multiple layers of the NMP and nanoparticles yields a lower resistance, which subsequently yields higher conductivity. The methodology outlined in this paper successfully created individually isolated conductive pathways, where indeed NMP does improve the conductive performance of the nanoparticles.Mechanical Engineerin