Oxygen ingress study of 3D printed gaseous radiation detector enclosures

As part of our ongoing studies into the potential application of 3D printing techniques to gaseous radiation detectors, we have studied the ability of 3D printed enclosures to resist environmental oxygen ingress. A set of cuboid and hexagonal prism shaped enclosures with wall thicknesses of 4mm, 6mm, 8mm and 10mm were designed and printed in nylon using a EOSINT P 730 Selective Laser Sintering 3D printer system. These test enclosures provide a comparison of different environmental gas ingress for different 3D printing techniques. The rate of change of oxygen concentration was found to be linear, decreasing as the wall thickness increases. It was also found that the hexagonal prism geometry produced a lower rate of change of oxygen concentration compared with the cuboid shaped enclosures. Possible reasons as to why these results were obtained are discussed. The implications for the this study for deployable systems are also discussed.