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. 2018 Aug 8;11(8):1382.
doi: 10.3390/ma11081382.

Surface Quality Enhancement of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) Printed Samples Based on the Selection of Critical Printing Parameters

Mercedes Pérez  1 , Gustavo Medina-Sánchez  2 , Alberto García-Collado  3 , Munish Gupta  4 , Diego Carou  5   6
Affiliations

Surface Quality Enhancement of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) Printed Samples Based on the Selection of Critical Printing Parameters

Mercedes Pérez et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

The present paper shows an experimental study on additive manufacturing for obtaining samples of polylactic acid (PLA). The process used for manufacturing these samples was fused deposition modeling (FDM). Little attention to the surface quality obtained in additive manufacturing processes has been paid by the research community. So, this paper aims at filling this gap. The goal of the study is the recognition of critical factors in FDM processes for reducing surface roughness. Two different types of experiments were carried out to analyze five printing parameters. The results were analyzed by means of Analysis of Variance, graphical methods, and non-parametric tests using Spearman's ρ and Kendall's τ correlation coefficients. The results showed how layer height and wall thickness are the most important factors for controlling surface roughness, while printing path, printing speed, and temperature showed no clear influence on surface roughness.

Keywords: 3D printing; ANOVA; additive manufacturing; correlation coefficients; fused deposition modeling; non-parametric tests; surface roughness.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
WITBOX printer and PLA filament.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Surface roughness measurement setup (b) Printed samples for experiment 1.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Details of the measurement procedure.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Surface roughness results of experiment 1 grouped by layer height.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Surface roughness results of experiment 1 grouped by wall thickness.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Surface roughness results of experiment 2 grouped by wall thickness.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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