Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is rapidly growing in popularity. This growth brings increased interest in studying the byproducts released during 3D printing. In this work, we present a new method to collect and analyze the metal composition of individual particles released during the operation of fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers using single-particle inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometry (spICP-TOFMS). The presented method uses a positive-pressure sampling chamber and membrane filters to collect the emitted particles. Particles are then extracted into water, and suspensions are analyzed by spICP-TOFMS. We study common filaments used for fused deposition modeling, including acylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA), and a specialty filament with stainless-steel particles embedded into the polymer. Using our sampling and extraction procedure, we measured over 1000 particles for each filament type. Critical masses for our measurements are as low as 0.03 fg. The most common measurable metals in the FDM-generated particles are Al, Ti, Fe, and Zr. Single-metal Fe particles make up over 50% of the thermoplastic particle population. We also identify multimetal associations in particles unique to each thermoplastic filament type. Using a stainless-steel-embedded polymer, we measure FeCr particles that are characteristic of the filament composition, with Fe:Cr mass ratios ranging from 4.4 to 3.6. Based on these particle compositions, we demonstrate that metal stainless-steel aerosols are released during the printing of the particle-embedded filament.

中文翻译：

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熔融沉积建模 3D 打印机释放的气溶胶颗粒物的单颗粒 ICP-TOFMS 分析


增材制造或 3D 打印正在迅速普及。这种增长使人们对研究 3D 打印过程中释放的副产品的兴趣越来越大。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种新方法，使用单粒子电感耦合等离子体飞行时间质谱 （spICP-TOFMS） 收集和分析熔融沉积建模 （FDM） 3D 打印机运行过程中释放的单个颗粒的金属成分。所提出的方法使用正压采样室和膜过滤器来收集发射的颗粒。然后将颗粒提取到水中，并通过 spICP-TOFMS 分析悬浮液。我们研究了用于熔融沉积建模的常见细丝，包括酰腈丁二烯苯乙烯 （ABS） 和聚乳酸 （PLA），以及将不锈钢颗粒嵌入聚合物中的特种细丝。使用我们的采样和提取程序，我们测量了每种细丝类型的 1000 多个颗粒。我们测量的临界质量低至 0.03 fg。FDM 生成的颗粒中最常见的可测量金属是 Al、Ti、Fe 和 Zr。单一金属 Fe 颗粒占热塑性颗粒数量的 50% 以上。我们还确定了每种热塑性细丝类型特有的颗粒中的多金属键合。使用不锈钢嵌入的聚合物，我们测量了细丝成分特征的 FeCr 颗粒，Fe：Cr 质量比范围为 4.4 至 3.6。基于这些颗粒成分，我们证明了金属不锈钢气溶胶在颗粒嵌入细丝的打印过程中会释放出来。