Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) can be used to manufacture any complex geometry and internal structures, and it has been widely applied in many industries, such as the biomedical, manufacturing, aerospace, automobile, industrial, and building industries. The purpose of this research is to characterize the polylactic acid (PLA) and polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) materials of FDM under four loading conditions (tension, compression, bending, and thermal deformation), in order to obtain data regarding different printing temperatures and speeds. The results indicated that PLA and PETG materials exhibit an obvious tensile and compression asymmetry. It was observed that the mechanical properties (tension, compression, and bending) of PLA and PETG are increased at higher printing temperatures, and that the effect of speed on PLA and PETG shows different results. In addition, the mechanical properties of PLA are greater than those of PETG, but the thermal deformation is the opposite. The above results will be a great help for researchers who are working with polymers and FDM technology to achieve sustainability.

In order to optimize the efficiency of the Fused deposition modeling (FDM) process, this study used polylactic acid (PLA) material under different parameters (the printing angle and the raster angle) to fabricate specimens and to explore its tensile properties. The effect of the ultraviolet (UV) curing process on PLA materials was also investigated. The results showed that the printing and raster angles have a high impact on the tensile properties of PLA materials. The UV curing process enhanced the brittleness and reduced the elongation of PLA material. Different effects were observed on tensile strength and modulus of specimens printed with different parameters after UV curing. The above results will be a great help for researchers who are working to achieve sustainability of PLA materials and FDM technology.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has the advantages of providing materials with lightweight microporous structures and customized features, and being environmentally safe. It is widely used in medical sciences, the aerospace industry, biological research, engineering applications, and other fields. Among the many additive manufacturing methods, fused deposition modeling (FDM) is relatively low-cost, wastes less raw material and has a lower technical threshold. This paper presents a study on 3D printing based on FDM by changing two printing parameters, namely the printing temperature and filling percentage. The produced polylactic acid (PLA) material was analyzed through tensile and Shore D hardness tests and the differences in mechanical properties before and after the UV curing process were analyzed. The results show that increasing the filling percentage or increasing the printing temperature can effectively improve the tensile Young’s modulus, ultimate tensile strength, elongation, and Shore hardness of the material. The UV curing process could enhance the rigidity and hardness of the material significantly but reduced the strength and toughness of the material. These findings could benefit researchers studying FDM with the goal of achieving sustainable manufactured materials.

This paper investigated the hardness property of the fused deposition modeling (FDM)-printed PLA samples via different process parameters of printing and raster angles. The hardness data were sampled from the flat and edge surfaces of the samples. In addition, the effect of hardness characters after the ultraviolet (UV) curing process was analyzed. Furthermore, this research found that the printing and raster angles significantly affected the hardness value of the PLA part, which slightly increased after the UV irradiation. Moreover, the results of this study will provide a reference for the field of FDM application.

Industries’ air pollution causes serious challenges to modern society, among them exhaust gases from internal combustion engines, which are currently one of the main sources. This study proposes a non-thermal plasma (NTP) system for placement in the exhaust system of internal combustion engines to reduce the toxic contaminants (HC, CO, and NO_x) of exhaust gases. This NTP system generates a high-voltage discharge that not only responds to the ion chemical reaction to eliminate NO_x and CO, but that also generates a combustion reaction at the local high temperature of plasma to reduce HC. The NTP system was designed on both the front and rear of the exhaust pipe to analyze the difference of different exhaust flow rates under the specified frequency. The results indicate that the NTP system can greatly reduce toxic contaminants. The NTP reactor placed in the front of exhaust pipe gave HC and CO removal efficiency of about 34.5% and 16.0%, respectively, while the NTP reactor placed in the rear of exhaust pipe gave NO_x removal efficiency of about 41.3%. In addition, the voltage and material directly affect the exhaust gases obviously. In conclusion, the proposed NTP system installed in the exhaust system can significantly reduce air pollutants. These results suggest that applying NTP to the combustion engine should be a useful tool to simultaneously reduce both emissions of NO_x and CO.

The chip side wall crack of semiconductor nanometer packaging process has always been an important technological problem that the global semiconductor packaging industry needs to overcome. This research has helped the world’s biggest semiconductor package factory to improve the chip side wall crack issue faced by nanometer wafer packaging process, thus enhancing its yield rate. After analyzing the abnormality of nanometer wafer packaging process, this research team found that the chip side wall crack problem was caused by a poor laser waveform during the laser cutting process, resulting in debris along the chip side wall. Subsequently, as the diamond cutter cuts into the chip in the following process, the cutter impacts the debris which then impacts the side wall resulting in a side wall crack. The TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch) analysis was used to deduce a suitable improvement method. After applying the TRIZ analysis, this research team confirmed that by modifying the laser equipment to create a more uniform laser waveform, the diamond cutter was able to achieve a clean cut of the chip without impacting debris and thus significantly decreased the chip side wall crack occurrences. The shipment yield rate was increased from 92.8% to 99.61% as a result of the team’s modifications.