Industrial product design: study of FDM technology for the manufacture of thermoformed prototypes

Abstract

During the process of thermoformed products design, the verification of the products is usually carried out through tests with prototypes and moulds made with plastics materials in order to reduce costs. Thus, one of the recent applications of additive manufacturing is the manufacture of moulds using the FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) technique. Indeed, the creation of moulds with FDM offers the possibility of generating moulds for high fidelity concept tests. However, one of the drawbacks that may arise are the materials employed using a plastic base which under the effects of warming could deteriorate. On the other hand, the properties of these moulds manufactured by FDM can transfer the surface defects of this technology to the thermoformed sheets. For this reason, in this work, the study of the surface roughness using various types of materials and the defects on the mould caused by the exposure to heating during the thermoforming process has been proposed.