Mechanical Property Characterization of Additive Manufactured ABS Material Using Design of Experiment Approach

Abstract

Additive manufacturing technology is a process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, contrary to conventional manufacturing technologies, which mostly use subtractive process. The technology has developed from the earlier days of rapid prototyping to sophisticated rapid manufacturing in the last 20 years and can create parts directly from CAD model without the use of tooling. This technology is predicted to revolutionize many sectors of manufacturing by reducing component lead-time, material waste, energy usage, etc. Though there is significant progress in the field, there are still a number of challenges including characterization of mechanical properties. This paper presents a study conducted to characterize the mechanical properties of ABS-M30 materials whose specimens are fabricated using different printing parameters. To understand the mechanical properties, it is vital to study the effects of the printing parameters on 3D printed parts. For this purpose, Design of Experiment (DOE) is used. The printing parameters of the machine (Fortus 450mc Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) machine) such as raster orientation, air gap, and raster width, were examined to test Tensile strengths and 3-point bend strength of the tested specimens. The study shows that, raster orientation and air gap has more effect on mechanical properties of ABS-M30 products where raster width has less effect.