Key factors towards a high-quality additive manufacturing process with ABS material

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing technologies have gained a lot of popularity during the past years. The current challenge being the transition of this manufacturing technology from prototype oriented towards mass production. In order to achieve this, fabrication times and mechanical parameters must be improved. This paper aims to identify which are the parameters that have the highest influence on parts obtained with fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology from ABS material. In addition, this study identifies which are the most accurate methods to test the mechanical properties of FDM parts while still respecting ASTM standard for testing the tensile properties of plastics. It was found that ASTM D638-02a type I samples are the most suitable to perform tests on high anisotropic plastic materials. The experiment also demonstrates that the build orientation and the wall thickness of FDM fabricated parts has the highest influence on the mechanical properties.