Modelization of Surface Roughness in FDM Parts

FDM is one of the rapid prototyping techniques. Although the large number of advantages of these techniques, the surface quality of the built parts is, in most cases, far away from the required value. This means that the use of post-processing steps is necessary and thus, the total manufacturing time is significantly increased. However with an optimal selection of few parameters during the design and manufacturing steps the surface quality can be improved considerably without post-processing steps. In the present research, three different cases are studied: one for plane surfaces, one for concave surfaces and another for convex surfaces. Using Taguchi method and ANOVA analysis it is determined which parameters among layer thickness, inclination, rotation along z-axis and the radio have more influence in the surface quality of each type of surface, and which their optimal levels are. Also, a regression model that relates these parameters with the surface quality is shown for each case. These models permit to have prior knowledge about the final roughness of the surfaces. Thus, this study gives complete information that permits designers and users of FDM process to calculate, in a very simple and quick way, an approximate surface roughness of the part before building it, and if this is not the require value, they know which are the main parameters and in which direction they can change them to get better results.

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