Analysis of the effect of changing printing parameters on the properties of additively manufactured Ultrafuse 316L steel samples

Abstract Material extrusion (MEX) is one of the several types of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology currently used to produce metal parts. The manufacturing process involves three main stages: printing, debinding, and sintering. The shape of the part is created using an MEX printer with a filament composed of metal powder dispersed in a polymer matrix. The quality of the final production and successful post-processing is determined by the printing process. This work used the commercially available filament BASF Ultrafuse 316L printed on a desktop 3D printer Prusa MINI+. A set of conventional made and two sets of 3D printed samples with different printing parameters are compared by measuring porosity and selected mechanical properties (tensile, notch toughness, hardness). The work shows the impact of changing key printing parameters, such as layer height and line width, which led up to a 4.47% increase in porosity and change in mechanical properties. At the same time, a fracture mechanism of samples after optimization has more similar characteristics to the conventional material.