Part Specific Applications of Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is one of the most important technological advances which has been implemented and recognised as a modern manufacturing technology with many advantages over conventional approaches. Fused deposition modelling is an additive manufacturing technology commonly used for modelling, prototyping, and production applications. In this work sample holding grips are designed and printed using fused deposition modelling. These are used in time-resolved experiments which require a dedicated system to study one to one structure-property relationships in electrically conductive nanocomposites under uniaxial strain. The grips serve not only to hold the sample during stretching but also have electrodes to measure the electric current and the voltage drop across the sample under uniaxial strain, as they are insulated from the rest of the tensiometer assembly. In such kind of experimental work, the success of the experiment strongly depends upon the grips as the fracture or slip of the sample during the experiment can ruin the data and lead to a loss of confidence on measurement. The use of additive manufacturing was a particular advantage in the optimization of the design of the grips.