Dielectric strength testing of 3D printed plastics and application to a high voltage transformer pulser

The use of additive manufacturing techniques offers the potential to rapidly fabricate complex insulator designs; however, the lack of dielectric strength data for many of the currently available printable plastics limits the usefulness of these materials in high electric field environments. The authors begin to address this issue by providing data from dielectric strength testing of selected plastic samples fabricated using the stereolithography (SLA), fused deposition modeling (FDM), and selective laser sintering (SLS) additive manufacturing techniques. Results of a high voltage transformer experiment using an SLA printed winding form will be presented.