Critical Parameters Effecting the Rapid Prototyping Surface Finish

A component can be manufactured in several ways. Rapid Prototyping technique is one among the material adding manufacturing process, building up its unique potential in the present scenario. This technique helps manufacture a product from the basic design of the component, thus optimizing the iterative product development process time and creating geometrically complex parts to precise dimensions. In the Rapid Prototyping process, surface finish is critical as it can affect the part accuracy, reduce the post-processing costs and improve the functionality of the parts. This paper presents an experimental design technique for determining the optimal surface finish of a part built by varying Build Orientation, Layer Thickness and keeping other parameters constant using the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process. The design investigates the effect of these parameters on the surface finish. Experiments were conducted using a fractional factorial design with two levels for Layer Thickness and three levels for Build Orientation factor. The results are statistically analyzed to determine the significant factors and their interactions. The significant factors, their interactions and the optimum settings are proposed.