Structure and Electrical Insulating Property of Additive Manufactured Material

Abstract

Recently, additive manufacturing techniques have been attracted in various fields of engineering including electrical insulating. However, the influence of the inner structure of additive manufactured polymer on electrical insulating property is not revealed. In this paper, the electrical breakdown strength of the horizontally-built and vertically-built photopolymer plate made by the inkjet-type 3D printer was measured. The results demonstrated that the electrical breakdown strength of the horizontally-built photopolymer plate was larger than that of vertically-built photopolymer plate. Moreover, the distribution and shape of voids in the both types of photopolymer plates was analyzed by scanning electron microscope and image processing. It is shown that building direction of photopolymer plate affects the electrical breakdown strength and anisotropy of voids inside the specimens.