3D printed carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites: A review

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been extensively used for producing desired parts with complex geometries without scrap production in short time. From past few years, it has been developed to produce prototypes, but its advantages have made researchers to deeply investigate and explore the possibility for manufacturing of functional parts. But the major limitation of AM technique which limits its use for manufacturing functional parts is that there is size limitation according to printer used, low production rate and low strength of the printed parts is not appropriate for direct replacement of functional parts. Many researchers have focussed on improving the strength of pure thermoplastic materials made from fused filament fabrication (FFF). One possible method is to build composite material by adding different fillers (such as carbon fiber, glass fiber, jute fiber, wood fiber, kevlar fiber etc.) to form a combination of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) that can be applied directly to aerospace, automotive, and wind power applications. After adding fiber reinforcement, it is important to properly investigate the mechanical properties and quality of fiber synthesized manufactured plastic parts. This short review summarizes all research work that has been carried out to investigate the effect of carbon fiber on FFF printed fiber reinforced composite.