Influence of fabric pretreatment on adhesion of three-dimensional printed material on textile substrates

Adding three-dimensional printed objects on existing surfaces enables creation of multi-material objects with tailored mechanical properties. Especially, the tensile strength of a textile fabric is advantageous in comparison with three-dimensional printed polymeric parts, while the latter can increase the stiffness of the composite. The adhesion forces between both material partners, however, are crucial for the reliability of the multi-material object. While several printing and material properties have been shown to influence the adhesion previously, this article concentrates on the possible pretreatment methods for three-dimensional printing on a cotton fabric. In our experiments, we have shown that especially pretreatments which made the textile surface more hydrophobic or more hydrophilic resulted in significant modifications of the adhesion forces. In addition, the adhesion is influenced by the infill orientation, with an orientation of 90° being significantly advantageous compared to 0°. While surface roughness was also shown to depend on the infill angle, no significant differences of the tensile strength or the elongation at break were measured.