A New Approach to Implementing 3D-Printed Material Structures for Protective Gloves with the Use of Ultrasonic and Contact Welding Processes: A Preliminary Study

This study presents a new approach to developing protective material structures for personal protective equipment (PPE), and in particular for protective gloves, with the use of ultrasonic and contact welding processes. The goal was to assess the quality of joints (welds) obtained between a synthetic polyamide knitted fabric (PA) and selected polymers (PLA, ABS, PET-G) in the developed materials using X-Ray microtomography (micro-CT). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed to determine the joint area produced by the selected welding methods for the examined materials. In this article, we assumed that obtaining a greater contact area seems to be the most promising from the point of view of future PPE utility tests characterizing protective glove structures. This research is a continuation of our previous study focused on functional 3D-printed polymeric materials for protective gloves.