ABSTRACT
Wood is a sustainable engineering material that is ubiquitous, inexpensive, durable, tough, and lightweight, and characterized by high ratio strength/weight and stiffness/weight. This chapter illustrates wood-filled materials for additive manufacturing (AM), and starts with an overview of wood, its microstructure, types, chemical components, commercial forms suited for AM, and market data. Mechanical properties and applications of non-AM particulate wood polymer composites are reported as a benchmark, since the ingredients in these composites are similar to those in wood-filled materials for AM. Commercial and experimental wood-filled feedstocks for AM are almost all in form of filaments, and are described along with their properties, suppliers, and compatible AM processes. Most recent research activity in wood-filled materials for AM is described, and includes: evaluation of various matrices (PLA, adhesives, and ceramics), wood-PLA compatibility and how to improve it, effect of additives, applications, nature-inspired design, new processes and nozzles. The diffusion of wood-filled materials for AM requires improving their mechanical performance, starting with increasing their weak wood−matrix interfacial adhesion, and reducing voids and wood particle agglomeration.
