Search

Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of the most widely used layered manufacturing technology in various industries due to its capability to create complex parts at the lowest cost. But when it comes to the mechanical properties, the advantage of FDM is not ideal for every application. This is due to the fact that the mechanical properties of the fabricated parts by FDM strongly related to the fabrication parameters in which the material is being processed, and so how to improve them is worthy of study. Many researchers have examined the influence of varying parameters on the characteristics of FDM manufactured prototypes. FDM manufactured parts are always subjected to static and dynamic loading conditions in a wide range of industries. However, former researches only focused on the mechanical properties under static loading conditions, but none of them provided a systematic study on the effect of FDM fabrication parameters on the mechanical performance under thermal-mechanical cyclic loading. This study investigates the effect of manufacturing parameters on dynamic mechanical performance of the processed parts by FDM through computer-generated optimal design based on I-optimal design. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was used to study the microstructures of some specimens. The results show that dynamic mechanical performance of the manufactured parts is greatly influenced by processing conditions. The results also show that computer-generated optimal design based on I-optimal design is superior over the conventional experimental designs as it is able to simultaneously consider several factors at different levels with less number of experiments than traditional designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the widely used additive manufacturing technologies because it has flexibility and ability to build complex parts. The accuracy of parts fabricated by FDM is greatly influenced by various process parameters. FDM process has a complex mechanism in building parts and often poses difficulty in understanding adequately how conflicting FDM parameters will determine part quality and accuracy. Sectors such as medical implant, telecommunication, electronics and aerospace require increasingly higher levels of dimensional accuracy. Thus, traditional methods of ensuring quality do not effectively address global markets and customer’s needs. This study proposes an I-optimality criterion for the optimization of FDM process parameters in order to address the limitations of the commonly used traditional designs. This study also aims to develop mathematical models in order to establish nonlinear relationship between process parameters and dimensional accuracy. The results show that I-optimality criterion is very promising technique in FDM process parameter optimization. Confirmation experiments show that the proposed method has great advantages in the aspect of both accuracy and efficiency compared with traditional methods proposed in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]