Parametric Appraisal of Compressive Strength of FDM Build Parts

Abstract

Now-a-days manufacturing industries are contemplating to develop new technologies for production of complex end use parts possessing high strength and low product development cycle in order to meet the global competition. Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of the proficient technologies having the ability to build accurately 3D complex geometry parts, with reasonably less time and material waste. Due to the build mechanism (layer-by-layer), the compressive strength of FDM build part is largely influenced by the selection of FDM process parameters. Therefore, using a design of experiment (DOE) approach, effect of six controllable process parameters such as layer thickness, part orientation, air gap, raster width, contour number and raster angle on the compressive strength of the FDM build is experimentally studied. The significance level of each process parameters are checked and analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) table. One empirical model is developed relating process parameters with the compressive strength of the FDM build parts.