Investigation of the Effect of Built Orientation on Mechanical Properties and Total Cost of FDM Parts

Abstract

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the rapid prototyping methods that produce prototypes from plastic materials such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) by laying tracks of semi-molten plastic filament onto a platform in a layer wise manner from bottom to top. In FDM, one of the critical factor is to select the build 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 Flexural 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, flexural 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.