Wear mechanisms and abrasion rates in selective laser sintering materials

Selective laser sintering offers very good mechanical material properties. The production in the powder bed gives total freedom in the layout without the need for support structures. One emerging application is the manufacturing of personalized shoes, be it for mass customization or in the medical field for patients with rheumatoid arthritis or later stages of diabetes. Because of this we are studying the wear and tribological behaviour of materials processed in this technology and we are looking for wear mechanisms that are unique to this process. We compared thermoplastic polyurethane as well as the defacto standard polyamide 12 under different loading scenarios to elicit different wear mechanisms. To account for the layerwise production process specimens build in different orientations were investigated and compared. A new wear mechanism was discovered and quantitative comparison of abrasion rates under different load conditions is given. The differences between building orientations were small and inconclusive.