INFLUENCE OF FDM PROCESS VARIABLES' ON TENSILE STRENGTH, WEIGHT, AND ACTUAL PRINTING TIME WHEN USING ABS FILAMENT

Abstract

The main advantage of the Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printing technology is that products can be manufactured by adjusting the levels of the manufacturing process variables. In this paper, the main factors affecting product weight and effective printing time, while maintaining the required durability in the fused deposition modelling process for absorbable butadiene-styrene (ABS) thermoplastic products are investigated. Three process variables, namely, infill density, layer thickness and infill pattern, were set at different levels to study their effect on product durability, product weight and effective printing time. Tensile stress was adopted as the standard for product durability. It was found that both the infill pattern and the infill density greatly affect the strength of the specimen. In particular, as the latter increases, the specimen's strength increases. It has also emerged that the infill density affects the weight of the specimen, such that decreasing the infill density reduces the weight of printed specimens for all kinds of infill patterns. It was also found that the thickness of the layer has a greater impact on effective printing time than the other two studied factors.