Preparation of specimens for standard tensile testing of plastic materials for FDM 3D printing

Additional manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D printing, exists for 40 years, still evolving and improving. AM has gained great popularity in modern industries due to many advantages concerning conventional manufacturing technologies. Consequently, AM is one of nine pillars of the currently dominating industry trend – Industry 4.0. Initially, AM was mostly used for making models. Now, objects made by AM technologies, often are physical parts ready to be used as final products or to be installed as parts of assemblies in more complex systems. Because of that, in more applications, the mechanical properties of these parts have to be known for the purpose to determine load carrying capacity essential for their functionality. Mechanical properties are being tested using appropriate methods, specimens, and equipment. In order to obtain comparable and evaluable test results, the test procedures and means should be s tandardized. Therefore, there was a need to develop standards for testing materials used for AM. International standardization in the field of AM started 10 years ago. The international body for standardization ISO developed and published a certain number of standards, but this is just beginning. This paper discusses aspects of AM standardization in the field of testing the mechanical properties of materials for 3D printing using fused deposition modelling (FDM). As an illustration of the standard application, specimens were prepared for testing the tensile properties of plastic materials widely used in AM: PLA, PETG and ABS+.