Effects of 3-D Printed Structural Characteristics on Magnetic Properties

Additive manufacturing, particularly 3-D printing, allows for completely customizable designs with relatively no limits on geometric complexities. In order to ensure optimal part design for potential magnetic applications, it is crucial to study how the different 3-D printer settings impact the magnetic properties of the printed part. Specifically, in this paper, it was determined how three structural print parameters (outer shell thickness, internal fill factor, and internal layer orientation) affect the resulting magnetic properties of 3-D printed cubic samples. The samples are made using fused deposition modeling of an iron-polymer composite filament. Hysteresis loops were gathered for fields applied along the [100], [110], and [001] directions of the printed cubes. From this, it was determined which combination of print settings should be used to achieve the most desirable magnetic response in terms of magnetic susceptibility, net magnetic moment, and mass-normalized saturation magnetization.