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The emission of ultrafine particles from small desktop Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printers has been frequently investigated in the past years. However, the vast majority of FFF emission and exposure studies have not considered the possible occurrence of particles below the typical detection limit of Condensation Particle Counters and could have systematically underestimated the total particle emission as well as the related exposure risks. Therefore, we comparatively measured particle number concentrations and size distributions of sub-4 nm particles with two commercially available diethylene glycol-based instruments – the TSI 3757 Nano Enhancer and the Airmodus A10 Particle Size Magnifier. Both instruments were evaluated for their suitability of measuring FFF-3D printing emissions in the sub-4 nm size range while operated as a particle counter or as a particle size spectrometer. For particle counting, both instruments match best when the Airmodus system was adjusted to a cut-off of 1.5 nm. For size spectroscopy, both instruments show limitations due to either the fast dynamics or rather low levels of particle emissions from FFF-3D printing in this range. The effects are discussed in detail in this article. The findings could be used to implement sub-4 nm particle measurement in future emission or exposure studies, but also for the development of standard test protocols for FFF-3D printing emissions.
Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is a material extrusion-based technique often used in desktop 3D printers. Polymeric filaments are melted and are extruded through a heated nozzle to form a 3D object in layers. The extruder temperature is therefore a key parameter for a successful print job but also one of the main emission driving factors as harmful pollutants (e.g., ultrafine particles) are formed by thermal polymer degradation. The awareness of potential health risks has increased the number of emission studies in the past years. However, studies usually refer their calculated emission data to the printer set extruder temperature for comparison purposes. In this study, we used a thermocouple and an infrared camera to measure the actual extruder temperature and found significant temperature deviations to the displayed set temperature among printer models. Our result shows that printing the same filament feedstocks with three different printer models and with identical printer set temperature resulted in a variation in particle emission of around two orders of magnitude. A temperature adjustment has reduced the variation to approx. one order of magnitude. Thus, it is necessary to refer the measured emission data to the actual extruder temperature as it poses a more accurate comparison parameter for evaluation of the indoor air quality in user scenarios or for health risk assessments.