Design For Manufacturing and Process Planning Guidelines for Improved Tensile Strength and Accuracy of the Parts Fabricated by 3D Printing

Abstract

The quality of a product is often measured in terms of strength and accuracy. The quality attributes like strength and accuracy is essential for the success of any RP process. 3D printing which is relatively new technology as compared to other RP technologies works on the same principle of additive manufacturing i.e. stacking one layer over other to fabricate a 3D part. Complexity of the part is not an issue in 3D printing but every manufacturing process has certain limitation and considerations. The quality attributes like strength and accuracy of the part is mainly depends upon the selection of the optimum combination of the influential process parameters. Thus in this study, design for manufacturing and process planning guidelines are developed to tackle the problems like strength and accuracy of the part fabricated by 3D printing at very first phase. Experimentation is done based on Taguchi method to obtain the optimum level of the process parameters to improve the tensile strength of the part. The process parameters taken into consideration were raster angle, layer thickness, printing speed and part bed temperature. With help of S/N ratio it is found that raster angle and layer thickness are two important parameters in determining the strength of the part and considering optimum levels for these will improve the strength of the part. Design for manufacturing and process planning for improved accuracy is also studied through various experiments. Guidelines were developed and verified by comparative study approach by fabricating two parts one which follows the guideline and other which violates the guideline. The anticipated quality attribute(s) of these two parts are quantified for each guideline. The results of present work would be useful for both product designer and process planner in manufacturing improved parts by 3D printing.