The influence of additive manufacturing parameters on the structural and mechanical properties of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) parts produced by fused filament fabrication

Abstract

The key to the operation of additive manufacturing is that the parts are made by adding the material layer by layer. Each layer is a thin cross section of the part derived from the original CAD data. Each layer must have a finite thickness and thus the resulting part will be an approximation of the original data. The thinner each layer, the more the resulting piece will be more like the designed part. All additive manufacturing techniques marketed so far use a layered approach. However, certain drawbacks were reported for this type of manufacturing, all depending on certain process parameters. One of the most important build parameters, in terms of cost and final properties, is the build construction angle. The influence of the build positioning (i.e. angle of the layers) in respect to the building plate, during fused filament fabrication of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) parts was studied. The characteristics of interest were: the structural features of the manufactured part and the mechanical properties obtained after tensile, compression, and hardness tests, all as function of the build orientation, while keeping the remaining manufacturing parameters identical. It was observed that the build orientation has a significant influence on the properties.