The growing demand in cheaper, more advanced and customized smart products require new and innovative manufacturing solutions. One of the manufacturing technologies which can provide a possible answer to this demand is Additive Manufacturing (AM). This group of techniques allows a high degree of freedom in terms of product shape and fast transfer from digital CAD model to physical product. By merging different AM technologies extra functionalities can be embedded into products.
In the presented paper first attempts have been made for adding sensing functionalities to AM products, by combining Aerosol Jet printing (AJP) with Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), in order to directly print PEDOT:PSS strain sensors onto ABS substrates. Both bending and strain tests are performed on the printed sensors. These tests show great potential in high strain measurements as strains up to 7 % can be detected, strain below 2 % is more difficult to detect since the sensors do not show linear behaviour over the entire sensing range. As of now repeatability for the printed strain sensors is still low, due to the surface roughness of the ABS substrates and instability of the AJP process. Future work will focus on stabilising the AJP process. However, the presented results prove that it is possible to combine both technologies for creating smart products.