Influence of Built Orientation on Mechanical Properties in Fused Deposition Modeling

Abstract

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the thirty techniques of rapid prototyping methods that produce prototypes from polymer materials (natural or with different grades). Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is one of the good material among all polymer materials. It is used in the layer by layer manufacturing of the prototype which is in the semi-molten plastic filament form and built up on the platform from bottom to top. In FDM, one of the critical factor is to select the built up orientation of the model since it affects the different areas of the model like main material, support material, built up time, total cost per part and most important the mechanical properties of the part. In view of this, objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of the built-up orientation on the mechanical properties and total cost of the FDM parts. Experiments were carried out on STRATASYS FDM type rapid prototyping machine coupled with CATALYST software and ABS as main material. Tensile and Impact specimens were prepared as per the ASTM standard with different built-up orientation and in three geometrical axes. It can be concluded from the experimental analysis that built orientation has significant affect on the tensile, impact and total cost of the FDM parts. These conclusions will help the design engineers to decide on proper build orientation, so that FDM parts can be fabricated with good mechanical properties at minimum manufacturing cost.