Design and Implementation of Rotational Print Heads to Control Fiber Orientation in Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing

Short fibers are being incorporated into 3D printable polymers to modify the properties of the printed composite. These fibers are, however, highly aligned in the print direction limiting the range of programmable site-specific characteristics. Recent work has demonstrated a novel approach of adding an additional shear field, through rotation, during the direct ink writing process, enabling control over the fiber orientation. This work endeavors to reproduce those results and demonstrate the same novel concept in fused filament fabrication, and outlines the challenges using these two systems.