Investigation into the Development of an Additive Manufacturing Technique for the Production of Fibre Composite Products

The advancements in manufacturing technology over recent years have made Additive Manufacturing, a breakthrough technology in the designing and manufacturing field. This paper discusses the possible applications of Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques for the production of Carbon Fibre (CF) components without the aid of mould or plug used by traditional methods. This paper investigates the available AM designing techniques to experimentally prove the validity of the research to develop a design concept that can be embedded into an AM machine as a 3D Printer. Polylactic acid (PLA) tensile test specimens are produced with CF reinforcement using both traditional moulding and AM techniques. The preliminary mechanical testing of moulded specimens with fibres revealed a tensile strength increase of up to 73% when compared to specimens without fibres and the testing of PLA filaments produced by AM with fibres showed a performance increase of 66% when compared to filaments without fibres.