Experimental Study of Effect of Process Parameters on Surface Roughness and Dimensional Accuracy of Parts Fabricated by Fused Deposition Modelling

Abstract

AbstractThe present paper focuses on experimental study of effect of process parameters on surface roughness and dimensional accuracy of parts fabricated by fused deposition modelling (FDM) technique of additive manufacturing (AM). The fabricated polylactic acid (PLA) parts have curved surfaces with hexagonal faces and circular shape at centre. Influence of process parameters, namely layer thickness, build orientation, extrusion temperature and raster width, is studied on responses, namely surface roughness and dimensional accuracy. Comprehensive experimental work is carried out using Taguchi’s orthogonal array to find effect of parameters on responses of curved surfaces. From the results, it is observed that layer thickness and build orientation majorly affect the surface roughness of parts. Surface roughness increases with layer height. It first decreases, then increases as built orientation increases. Dimensional accuracy in width direction is mostly influenced by layer height, build orientation and extrusion temperature. With increase in layer height the dimension deviation initially decreases and then increases. With increase in part orientation, dimension deviation firstly increases and then decreases. It initially decreases, then increases with extrusion temperature.KeywordsFused deposition modellingProcess parametersSurface roughnessDimensional accuracy