A STUDY ON EFFECT OF THE FACTORS ON NATURAL RUBBER LATEX 3D PRINTING

This project was aimed to form pre-vulcanized natural rubber latex mixing with nano-silica using the 3D printing technique. The latex feeder of a 3D printer used was an air pressure jet dispenser. The 3D printing parameters were the nozzle holes of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 millimeter and the air pressures of 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 mega pascal. In the experiment, the content of nano-silica mixed with the latex were 4.5, 5.0 and 5.5 phr, providing the viscosity of 1100, 1200 and 1500 Pascal• Second, respectively. It was found that the nozzles with 1 and 2 mm holes were unable to print in this pressure range. The 3, 4 and 5 millimeter nozzles can be used to print the nano-silica latex with the viscosity of 1500 Pascal-Second well. The 3 millimeter nozzle was suitable for printing at 0.3 mega pascal while the 4 and 5 millimeter nozzles were proper at 0.25 mega pascal.