Mechanical reinforcement of additive-manufactured constructs using in situ auxiliary heating process

The material extrusion (ME) process, which is an additive manufacturing technology applicable to a wide range of polymers, has a drawback in that the inherent bonding between the deposited layers is vulnerable. To this end, we present an efficient strengthening method for the ME process by introducing bidirectional in situ infrared (IR) heating during the polymer melt deposition in the 3D-printing process. The auxiliary IR irradiation was...