Art, sculptures and even mass-produced objects are often built to last. Ancient Greek sculptures from thousands of years ago may have lost their color (and sometimes a few limbs) but are otherwise in good shape. Paintings from the 17th and 18th century look almost as lively as they did when they were drying on the easel. Even Lego bricks that spent 25 years in the sea or on the beach still look brand new today. But what will 3D-printed objects look like in the future?
Multicolored filaments of plastic for printing on 3D printer.
3D printers to create rapid on-demand objects have only been around for a short time. It’s a popular technique for making quick mock-ups or temporary solutions, but 3D-printing can also be used for more long-term applications. For example, some museums used it to create tactile models for interactive displays or even to create structural parts to support restoration projects. Either way, these are not temporary whimsical creations, but structures that they would likely still want to be in perfect shape several years down the line.
There are also other reasons to want to preserve 3D-printed materials for more than just a few years, but we haven’t had the technology for long enough to really know what will happen to these objects over time.
To find out, art conservation researchers at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain subjected two types of 3D printing materials to an artificial accelerated aging process. When plastics age, any damage such as loss of color or chemical changes in the materials are often caused either by UV radiation from exposure to light or by extreme temperature fluctuations. To simulate these extreme environments in a much faster scale than natural aging, the researchers put the 3D printed samples and the original filaments in two different chambers: One exposing the samples to UV light and the other subjecting them to a range of high temperatures.
They tested two popular materials regularly used for filament-based 3D printing: Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polylactic Acid (PLA). For both they tested a piece of the filament that’s fed into the printer, and a small rectangle of printed material.
Both ABS and PLA showed chemical changes when they were subjected to their rapid aging simulations. But of the two, PLA fared a bit better than ALS did. ALS lost more of its color after UV radiation or temperature changes, and the material structure became more fragile and a bit warped. On the other hand, PLA only showed very minor changes after UV radiation, but did show some bulges in the material after spending time in the temperature chamber.
This is useful to know for people who want their 3D-printed creations to last and it can also help manufacturers who want to develop more durable 3D printing materials. Still, there is a lot more left to investigate. There are other 3D printing materials that still need to be checked and other analyses still to be done. And of course only time will tell how these materials really age.
