Usage of Vinyl 303
in company Rolls Royce
One of the world’s leading industrial technology companies Rolls-Royce started cooperation with Fillamentum to improve the production and reduce costs. Rolls-Royce uses a wide variety of different coating systems on its components to protect from heat, erosion or the environment. Rolls-Royce spends over £1 billion per year on research and development and some of this money is used to develop and test new coatings for use in the jet engines.
Rolls-Royce Plc. manufactures a large number of test coupons coated only in specific areas with using masks to avoid the deposition of coatings on areas where coatings cannot appear. Usually it is used plasma spraying to deposit these coatings and the masks printed from Vinyl 303 must survive high temperatures from the plasma flame itself.
Before an implementation of Vinyl 303 into a production the filament needs to pass several trials. A simple plate is printed and then loaded into a thermal spray booth and mounted on a rotating ring. The plate was exposed to a plasma coating flame for about 20 minutes. The part has survived untouched by the extreme temperatures of the flame (up to 400 °C).
After that the material was trialed the other method for coating which is called the scan method or raster method, and this puts more heat into samples “We always ensure we spin the rotary table sufficiently fast to avoid the flame staying in an area for too long. During this time, we rotate the turntable and spray metal or ceramic powders on to metal substrates and often want to mask areas from the coating.“ explains Dr. Grant Gibson BEng, material technologist, surface engineering in Rolls-Royce Plc. Temperature of the surface of the PVC would have been approximately 300 °C – 400 °C for around 2 seconds during the deposition of the coating. The initial trial was aimed at replicating the worst-case scenario where the mask printed in Vinyl 303 was exposed to the full force of the plasma flame during deposition and it survived.
“This now enables us to work on developing the idea further and possibly use more PVC masks in the future particularly for bespoke test coupons where a metal mask would be expensive.” says Dr. Gibson and adds “The use of Vinyl 303 unlocks the ability to create cheap masks with the design flexibility that 3D printing offers. It means that productivity and reduce of costs can be improved, plus the metals masks wear out with time.”
Summary of requirements for the material
Flame retardant properties
High temperature resistance – plasma spraying is used to deposit coatings. Masks must survive high temperatures from the plasma flame itself (up to 400 °C).
Hardness
Durable, long-life material
Vinyl 303 is a commodity plastic available as a 3D printing filament. Developed in cooperation with experts in Resitech Germany GmbH, part of a Westlake Chemicals Group.
