I have an idea I want to try out involving sintering (melting) powdered plastic with a laser as an alternative to extruding plastic from a nozzle. To do this, I need some sort of plastic, ideally ABS plastic that is powdered and will absorb the laser light. I’m guessing it will be an IR laser, but I figure black plastic would be a good bet for this.
Any ideas?
well, generally polyethylene when it is manufactured by companies like DOW Chemicals for first run, virgin, commercial applications like blow-molding is sold in tiny pellets roughly the size of small BBs. its a bit of a pain to do it, but you can actually get dow to send you a few hundred pounds of the stuff for free if you tell them that you have a blow molder somewhere and want to do a sample run with their product. if you had a decent blender, im bet you could pulverize the pellets even further to get the dust consistency that you want to work with. i hope this is helpful – good luck!
thanks for that tip! i actually ended up ordering some powder coating material. its plastic + pigment, and as soon as my laser gets here, i’m going to see if its possible to melt it!!
wish me luck =)
There is a readily available material designed to do just what you want. Toner is a plastic powder which absorbs laser light.
Larry