Particle Emissions Characterization of Seventeen 3D Printer Filaments

Fused filament fabrication 3D printers have become popular for at-home use. While these printers enable the convenient creation of 3D objects, their potential inhalation hazards are not widely known among the public. 3D printer feedstocks, known as filaments, consist of a variety of plastics, including acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), poly-lactic acid (PLA), and polycarbonate (PC), all of which have been linked to the emission of indoor air particles during 3D printing. These particle emissions have also been linked to adverse effects in in-vivo and in-vitro studies. The objective of this study was to characterize particle emissions from seventeen commercially available printing filaments in an enclosed test chamber and explore how particles behaved at different time points during the 3D printing process. Particle number concentrations, particle number emission rates, and size distributions were collected and quantified from a sampling flask using a scanning mobility particle sizer. Particle number concentrations were greatest among ABS filaments, followed by metal-containing PLA, PLA, and PC filaments. Size distributions at different time points showed that particle distributions widened and reached a stable distribution at approximately ten minutes into data collection. On average, particles were also observed to be largest among ABS filaments while emissions from one PLA manufacturer showed consistently larger particle sizes than the other. A relative ranking comparison of average particle number concentrations with results from a recent study [1] that used filaments with the same lot numbers found some similarity, despite different methods for particle capture.