Additive manufacturing processes sheet lamination

Coextrusion is an important process for manufacturing layered plastic composites, such as film, sheet, and tubing (Middleman, 1977 Schrenk and Alfrey, 1983 Schrenketal., 1963). A costly alternative would be the fabrication of individual layers of plastics followed by conventional lamination and coating. An additional advantage of the coextrusion technique is its ability to handle extremely thin films on the order of 10 xm. One of the most colorful applications of this technique is the iridescent film, which consists of hundreds of very thin layers of alternating low and high refractive indices. A typical example of this type of film consists of 116 layers of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) with refractive index 1.49 and 115 layers of polystyrene (PS) with refractive index 1.59 and total film thickness of about 20 o.m (Radford et al., 1973). 

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