A DESIGN-FOR-MANUFACTURING APPROACH TO FUSED DEPOSITION MODELLING PROCESSING PARAMETERS: EXPERIMENTS

Abstract

As a quick prototyping method for visualising and validating ideas, additive manufacturing (AM) first emerged. As AM technologies like Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) have advanced in recent years, they are now moving from fast prototyping to rapid production applications. The issue of manufacturing usable components for end-users utilising FDM proved to be a difficult one. Building direction, extrusion temperature, layer height, infill pattern and more are just few of the many variables that determine the final design of a component. Quality and functionality are influenced by the FDM process parameters. Detailed knowledge of the effects of the FDM processing settings on the mechanical qualities, dimensional accuracy, and construction time of the finished product is also needed. When it comes to the mechanical qualities and repeatability of FDM components, an experimental research has been conducted to examine the impact of each processing parameter. 18 test samples were printed using different processing conditions. It was necessary to measure the measurements of these specimens and compare them to an accurate 3D CAD model to examine the repeatability and the resulting tolerances. To determine the mechanical parameters of each produced sample, the research described here used an ASTM D638 tensile test. A Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model is also included in the paper. Future studies on the combined impacts of processing parameters should include simulating their behaviour under mechanical stresses.