Mechanical Behaviour of Polyamide 12 Parts Manufactured by SLS Process

This study was elaborated in order to study the mechanical behaviour of specimens built by additive manufacturing, namely Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). SLS is a technique that consists of orienting a laser beam over powdered raw material and this incision causes the material to heat up, melting it into the desired parts. Unprocessed powdered raw material acts as a support structure during the construction process, which is one of the advantages of process optimization. Other advantages are the construction of parts or prototypes with complex geometries in a short time and the diversity of materials that can be used in this technology as raw material. In this study, the equipment was kindly provided by a company from Marinha Grande, Centimfe, where the specimens necessary for the execution of the tests were made. The test pieces were constructed in 4 different orientations, with a zigzag construction path. The mechanical tests considered in this study were: tensile, stress relaxation and hardness. These tests allowed to analyse the mechanical of the specimens obtained after the sintering of the raw material under study, namely polyamide 12. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of the construction orientation, considering the mechanical, where orientation 4 (Edge 0°, horizontal XX axis) was the one that obtained the best results, having been built according to the XX and ZZ axes, which gives it a higher mechanical resistance.