Investigation on the Influence of Process Parameters on the Mechanical Performance of 3D Printed Specimens

3D printing using Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is a familiar technique in additive manufacturing employed in this work to fabricate specimens made of Polylactic Acid (PLA).The objective of the present study is to investigate the mechanical behavior of 3D printed PLA specimens for various testing parameters combination.The process parameters selected for investigation in this study were the infill pattern, filling speed and layer thickness, whereas parameters such as the infill density, raster angle, build orientation and nozzle temperature were maintained at a fixed value during fabrication.Analyzing the 3D printed specimens, higher order porosity was observed at layer thickness 0.28 mm and filling speed 50 mm/s.The tensile strength increased with increasing filling speed and decreasing filling layer thickness.A maximum tensile strength of approximately 15 MPa was observed for a filling speed of 50 mm/s and layer thickness 0.16 mm.The tensile performance of the specimens with gyroid filling patterns was inferior to that of the specimens with line and triangular filling patterns.Specimens fabricated with filling speed of 30 mm/s and filling layer thickness of 0.16 mm resulted in better compressive strength.The flexural performance of 3D printed specimens was better at higher filling speeds, which contradicted the tensile and compression performances.Overall, specimens printed under lesser filling speed of 30 mm/s and lesser layer thickness of 0.16 mm resulted in better mechanical performance due to enhanced bonding strength with higher degree of adhesion between the layers.