New materials developed to expand 3D printing need published material properties, but there are layers of difficulty.
Designing functional engineered systems using 3D printing requires more data on material properties. A paper that helped add some of the necessary data on the “Thermal Properties of 3-D Printing Polylactic Acid–Metal Composites” was published. Researchers aimed the study at copperFill, bronzeFill, magnetic iron polylactic acid (PLA), and stainless-steel PLA composites and provide insight into the technical considerations of fused filament fabrication (FFF) composite 3-D printing. The following is taken from this study.