In the last decades, additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have experienced a big growth, along with the unprecedented technological development produced in the same period. These have gone from being used almost exclusively as a method of rapid prototyping in its beginnings, to appear as a consolidated alternative for the manufacture of final products compared to more traditional manufacturing technologies. All of this, due to the advantages that this technology present, among which stand out the manufacturing cost, time reduction and the ability to produce more complex parts in a single stage. Among all the techniques developed, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), generally known as 3D printing, is the one that has shown the higher growth due to its simplicity and the low cost of the manufacturing equipment, reaching an endless number of sectors, both in and out the industrial field [1].

Within the variety of materials used in FDM technology, polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) is shown as a novel alternative of great interest, due to its widespread use in the industrial sector and the advantageous characteristics that presents respect to other used materials, such as its low production costs, the possibility of being recycled, acceptable physical properties and its capability to be biocompatible [2].

In this work, the printing temperature influence on the mechanical properties of manufactured parts using the FDM method is studied. For this, we made a set of PETG samples, with a concentric fill pattern and a 100% fill density, using a conventional 3D printer, and varying the temperature of the printer nozzle in a range from 230 ºC to 260 ºC. Subsequently, tensile, compression, bending and hardness tests are carried out, in order to compare the different mechanical properties obtained from them.

Acknowledgements

This work has been partially supported by the Plan Propio de Investigación 2022 of the Universidad de La Laguna through Proyectos Dirigidos por Noveles Investigadores/as (2022/20258)