Evaluation on effect of printing process parameter through Taguchi approach on mechanical properties of 3D printed PLA specimens using FDM at constant printing temperature

Abstract

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is a method of polymer 3D printing. Since the material is laid layer by layer, the printing process parameters will affect the performance of the printed part mainly due to bonding between the layers and print quality. This paper studies the effect of various printing parameters (Layer thickness, build orientation and raster angle) on the mechanical properties of PLA specimens processed and tested as per ASTM standard through Design of Experiment (DOE) using Taguchi approach by L9 orthogonal array. Printed specimens were tested using tensometer under normal conditions and raw data obtained were used to evaluate the influence of each process parameter on percentage elongation and Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS). It is observed that layer thickness has negative correlation with UTS. Mean UTS tend to decrease with increase in layer thickness. Specimen tend to show maximum tensile strength at 450 build orientation and raster angle has less significant on tensile strength compare to other two selected process parameter for the current study. Maximum UTS observed is 46.65 MPa for 0.1 mm layer thickness, 300 raster angle and 00 build orientation. To assess if process variables have any significant features, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is performed. It is observed that layer thickness has more influence than build orientation and raster angle.