THE STRENGTH WITHIN LAYERS: ANALYZING PLA TENSILE STRENGTH IN 3D PRINTING

Abstract

One of the most popular Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques is Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), sometimes referred to as 3D printing. It is based on the extrusion of a thermoplastic filament. Lightweight items can be constructed utilising a variety of infill procedures and ratios thanks to layer wise technology. Furthermore, components with varied properties can be produced by adjusting other factors like temperature, printing speed, or layer thickness. Since Polylactic Acid (PLA) is a biobased and biodegradable plastic, it is one of the least expensive and most environmentally friendly materials for 3D printing. It is commonly used in 3D printing among amateurs and in communities like the Fab lab or the Makers movement. In order to determine how key 3D printing factors affect the tensile strength of PLA products, Design of Experiment (DOE) is used in this work. In order to accomplish this, a 4x3 factorial plane with one replication was built and utilised to 3D print tensile PLA material samples. The findings of the tensile test demonstrate that for the resistance of PLA products, the layer thickness is more important than the infill. According to the values of these four factors, a regression model is also suggested to enable the user to forecast the final tensile strength of PLA products