WINDOW PRINTING IN 3D AT DE NAYER CAMPUS

ONDERZOEK IN DE KIJKER

Golden earrings, plastic iPad cases, chocolate letters … the list of materials and objects that can be 3D printed grows longer every day. Researchers from De Nayer Campus have managed to 3D print a large window with curved shapes, integrated ventilation and LED lighting. Deceuninck, the company that designed the window, is delighted with the result. Prof. Eleonora Ferraris, Ing. Loren De Vogelaer and PhD student Jie Zhang from the Advanced Manufacturing Lab De Nayer Campus, explain.

“3D printing technology, also referred to as Additive Manufacturing (AM), is an umbrella of manufacturing processes where layers of materials are built up to create a solid object”, says Prof. Ferraris. “There are countless 3D printing techniques using varied types of principles to add materials to achieve the final product”.

“Customer-driven production and the demand for time and cost savings have increased the interest in the agility of the manufacturing process. This has led to continuous improvement in rapid prototyping technologies. Given the size, the material and unusual shape of the window, we opted for a technology based on thermoplastic extrusion, specifically Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)”.

Flaminco

Prof. Ferraris’ Advanced Manufacturing Lab is one of seven research groups at De Nayer Campus. It is part of the division Manufacturing Processes and Systems (MaPS) of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Research topics include additive manufacturing, especially nozzlebased, including aerosol jet ® printing, fused filament fabrication, and stereolithography. The Advanced Manufacturing Lab and Deceuninck, the Belgian market leader in the production of windows and doors, found each other in the SIM-ICON project Flaminco of Strategic Initiative Materials in Flanders (SIM).

“Flaminco stands for Polymer Filaments for Additive Manufacturing of Individual Components”, continues Loren De Vogelaer. “The project focused on progressing the state-of-art of materials and extrusion 3D printing production chain based on the requirements of large applications. Besides Deceuninck and KU Leuven, the consortium included two other industrial partners: Materialise in Leuven and Proviron in Oostende, who specialise in respectively additive manufacturing and polymers. The research group of Prof. Brecht Van Hooreweder and Peter van Puyvelde (KUL) was also involved in the project. All together, we investigated the technical and economic feasibility of new materials and 3D printing larger thermoplastic products as an alternative to the small series extrusion and other standard production technologies avoiding high tooling costs and long lead times”.

For Deceuninck, the project was an excellent opportunity to investigate whether 3D printing technologies are suitable for the production of large windows with curved shapes equipped with built-in ventilation and LED lighting. Since such windows are custom-made, they cannot be mass-produced, which means that the costs must be kept under control. “Sustainability is another important criterion for the company”, Loren De Vogelaer adds. “At Deceuninck, special attention is paid to the rational use of materials and energy, anticipating the legal requirements that by 2050, every home in Flanders must be as energy-efficient as an energy-performing new house”.

Joren De Vogelaer, prof. Eleonora Ferraris and Jie Zhang

©Joren De Weerdt

Big size printing

As mentioned earlier, the researchers opted for the Fused Filament Fabrication technology. Jie Zhang, PhD student at De Nayer Campus explains: “FFF is a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of thermoplastic material. The object is built by disposing melted material layer-by-layer. Typically, the extruder head moves in two dimensions, creating a layer at a time before adjusting vertically to begin a new layer. FFF benefits include having a large variety of materials to choose from, fast printing from ideas to prototypes and multiple printer manufacturers. In our lab, we have the equipment to print large pieces. It is a Discovery 3D printer, financed by De Nayer Stichting. This means we can be more economical with materials and, by extension, produce more cheaply. The quality and the integrity of the manufactured parts, i.e. the finish, the mechanical strength and the porosity, are the result of the temperature profile of the polymer deposits when in contact with the underlying layers. In the Flaminco project, I was testing the newly developed PVC filaments, and one of the objectives of my PhD research is to develop new strategies that optimally control the local temperatures during the process”.

“It takes about 11 to 12 days to produce a whole window with high surface quality”, prof. Ferraris continues. “The window is 1.5 m in height, and we produced it in multiple pieces that were assembled afterwards. The NGen material from Colorfab was used at the first side. Now we are producing the window in the newly developed PVC filament provided by Deceunick too. The biggest challenge was warping of the long pieces and to ensure continuous printing with no failure”.

In the meantime, the Advanced Manufacturing Lab has finished two prototypes of the window. They can be seen at De Nayer Campus in Sint- Katelijne-Waver and at Deceuninck in Hooglede-Gits.

Yves Persoons