Influence of Build Orientation on Tensile and Flexural Strength of FDM Fabricated ABS Component

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a tool-free manufacturing process that has ability to fabricate a part with high dimensional accuracy with ease. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is a commonly used 3D printing thermoplastic polymer with applications in various industries, viz., automotive and aerospace. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is the most popular and extensively used extrusion-based AM technique to fabricate plastic parts, though the strength and anisotropic behavior of the fabricated part still require improvement. Part orientation during printing plays an important role in the printing process. In this work, a detailed analysis has been carried out on FDM-printed specimens of ABS material at different orientations ranging from 0 to 90° with vertical and horizontal. Tensile and flexural properties of ABS-printed specimens were evaluated to study the effect of build orientations and filament deposition in the FDM process. Fractography of fractured surfaces was also analyzed to study the fracture behavior of 3D-printed specimens.