Researchers from the Laboratory of High Energy Physics at JINR, Tomsk Polytechnic University, and Tomsk National Research Medical Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences conducted X-ray study of the density distribution of samples printed by fused filament fabrication with different fill patterns.

Three-dimensional printing has a wide range of applications in science and technology. Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is a commonly used technology in 3D printing, which is now being increasingly employed in radiation physics. In FFF, the internal structure of an object is primarily determined by its fill pattern and selected print modes. Therefore, this study aims to examine the interaction between X-rays and 3D printed plastic samples with various infill patterns. The 3D printed objects are produced using FFF with plastic and different infill patterns, including Rectilinear, Grid, Triangles, Stars, Honeycomb, Concentric, Archimedean Chords, Gyroid, and Hilbert Curve. Infill densities of 80% and 90% were utilised.

Tomographic methods were applied to analyse the resulting samples. The study provides tomograms of the internal structure for each infill pattern. It was observed that Rectilinear and Grid patterns produced the most homogeneous samples. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the propagation of X-rays through 3D-printed plastic samples with complex internal structures.

Journal of Instrumentation published the results of the study. The authors are Angelina Bulavskaya, Elizaveta Bushmina, Anna Grigorieva, Irina Miloichikova, and Sergey Stuchebrov.