Influence of Selected Printing Parameters on the Mechanical Behavior of FDM-Printed ABS Specimens Using Taguchi Method

Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is the most popular additive manufacturing technique for producing prototypes in which a semi-molten thermoplastic such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is extruded on a build plate in a layer wise manner from bottom to top. In FDM, the mechanical properties of a 3D-printed part are greatly affected by the build parameters such as the raster angle, extrusion temperature, layer thickness, and infill. With this, the objective of the present study is to characterize the effect of selected input build parameters on the compressive strength and impact resistance of the FDM-printed parts using orthogonal array, signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Using Taguchi’s method for the design of experiment (DOE), the optimal build parameter combinations and significant main effects were determined. Confirmation experiments were also carried out and were compared with the Taguchi-based predicted values. The experimental results are within the accepted 95% confidence interval suggesting that the optimization was successful at 5% confidence level.