Effect of Process Parameters on Compressive Properties of ULTEM 9085 Produced by FDM Process

Abstract

Fused deposition modeling (FDM), one of the additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, is a promising digital manufacturing technique that produces parts, layer by layer, by heating, extruding and depositing filaments of thermoplastic polymers. The properties of FDM-produced parts apparently depend on the processing parameters. These processing parameters have conflicting advantages that need to be investigated. This paper investigates the effect of process parameters on the compressive properties of parts produced by the FDM process. The study is carried out on a high performance polymeric material called ULTEM 9085. Full factorial design of experiment is used to analyze the effects of process parameters on the compressive properties of the material. Five parameters: namely, air gap, raster width, raster angle, contour number and contour width, of the FDM machine are considered in the current study. The results show that, with the exception of the raster width, all other considered parameters have significant interaction effect on the compressive strength. For the compressive strain, air gap, contour number and contour width showed substantial interaction effects.