Some investigations on surface roughness of aluminium metal composite primed by fused deposition modeling-assisted investment casting using reinforced filament

Abstract

Fused deposition modeling-assisted investment casting (FDMAIC) has shown its capability to substantially shorten the product development time and cost. However, this additive technology suffers badly from poor surface finish of the patterns which affects the surface quality of cast specimens. The resulting casting often requires post-surface finishing operation before their service assignments, and is the major factor for increased production cost. In the present research work, surface roughness of aluminium matrix composites developed has been improved by introducing a pre-finishing stage, to fused deposition modeled pattern made of reinforced filament, as barrel finishing (BF) process. Six controllable process parameters of FDMAIC and BF, namely filament proportion, volume of cubical pattern, density of pattern, burnishing time, burnishing media weight and number of slurry layers were studied at 12 and 53 parametric levels using Taguchi L18 orthogonal array to find out their effect on surface roughness of casted aluminium matrix composites. It has been found that surface roughness of final castings was significantly improved by the introduction of BF in FDMAIC.