Possible Applications of 3D Printing Technology on Textile Substrates

TLDR

3D printing, especially low‑cost fused deposition modeling, is emerging as a flexible, cost‑effective add‑on process for textiles, where adhesion depends on surface topography, roughness, hairiness, and wettability that can be tuned by pre‑treatments such as washing, finishing, or plasma. The study applies low‑cost fused deposition modeling with flexible thermoplastic filaments such as TPE and Soft PLA to textile substrates. The authors printed 3D structures onto woven fabrics using low‑cost FDM with various flexible thermoplastics and evaluated adhesion through separation force and abrasion resistance tests. The tests demonstrated that adequate adhesion and stability of 3D printed structures on textiles can be achieved.

Abstract

3D printing is a rapidly emerging additive manufacturing technology which can offer cost efficiency and flexibility in product development and production. In textile production 3D printing can also serve as an add-on process to apply 3D structures on textiles. In this study the low-cost fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique was applied using different thermoplastic printing materials available on the market with focus on flexible filaments such as thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) or Soft PLA. Since a good adhesion and stability of the 3D printed structures on textiles are essential, separation force and abrasion resistance tests were conducted with different kinds of printed woven fabrics demonstrating that a sufficient adhesion can be achieved. The main influencing factor can be attributed to the topography of the textile surface affected by the weave, roughness and hairiness offering formlocking connections followed by the wettability of the textile surface by the molten polymer, which depends on the textile surface energy and can be specifically controlled by washing (desizing), finishing or plasma treatment of the textile before the print. These basic adhesion mechanisms can also be considered crucial for 3D printing on knitwear.