Technical Paper
Engine O-Rings Produced Using Additive Manufacturing
2023-04-11
2023-01-0893
Additive Manufacturing (AM) using stereolithography (SLA) was applied to produce engine O-rings using two different flexible polymer printing materials, Flex 80A and Elastic 50A. Print orientation of the O-ring in the SLA 3D printer is important, with the horizontal configuration most commonly providing for the smoothest final O-ring printed surface due to the lack of printing support tabs required. AM printing tabs lead to O-ring ‘marks’ (non-smooth surfaces) that were evaluated using the Society of Automotive Engineers SAE AS871B standard. It was seen that numerous printing approaches produced ‘marks’ that were larger than acceptable, which shows that these studied AM processes can not replace traditional methods of O-ring manufacture. However, further evaluation was pursued to explore possible remote emergency usage of these O-rings. Printed O-rings were next tested-soaked in engine related fluids in order to characterize O-ring swelling behavior.