3D Printing

Soluble Support Material Supports Creation of Hollow Composite Parts

As it turns out, soluble support materials for FDM/FFF 3D printing may offer more uses than just support. Customers of Stratasys have been utilizing their machines to take advantage of the unique properties of the soluble support material itself.  Most often, soluble support created by their Fortus machines is being used to create soluble cores for the production of composite parts.

formula sae fdm

If you read the interview with MarkForged CEO, Greg Mark, or if you’re just familiar with composite manufacturing, you’ll know that composite parts are made by laying down or wrapping composite materials and resin over moulds, patterns, cores and mandrels. Producing hollow composite parts is a difficult challenge, dealt with by forming two halves of an object in a mould, joining the halves, and cutting away excess material.  With soluble support materials, however, it’s possible to create the soluble skeleton for an object that can be wrapped in composite material and rinsed away, leaving a hollow part. That’s exactly what students at ELiTH Racing at Linköping University in Sweden did when producing parts for their Formula SAE race car.

The students from the non-profit Students Association, ELiTH Racing, were able to optimize the air intake manifold of their Formula SAE race car by 3D printing a soluble core.  As you’ll see in the video below, the team printed their manifold in heat resistant, soluble support material, wrapped it in carbon fiber, vacuum sealed the part and cured it in an autoclave, and dissolved the inner core in a support removal bath.  This left the team with a lightweight manifold with which to race. In addition to the air intake manifold, the students 3D printed such parts as the driver’s dashboard and the throttle hose on their Formula SAE car.

While the machine and materials used by the ELiTH students were produced by Stratasys, it makes me wonder what sorts of projects might be pursued using a desktop 3D printer and soluble PVA or HIPS. Experimenting with prosumer grade materials probably won’t leave you open to creating carbon fiber composite parts, but there may be other neat things you can accomplish with soluble materials on your desktop machine.  I’m struggling to find many interesting uses for the stuff online, so if anyone out there has tried something unique with soluble support materials available to consumers, let us know!

Source: Stratasys