Accuracy Investigation of Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) Processed ABS and ULTRAT Parts

Introduction

Since the emergence of the first AM process, Stereolithography (SLA) in the late 1980s, additive manufacturing (AM) technology has been the subject of several studies with numerous patents accepted, and new processes widely commercialized (Levy & Schindel, n.d.). Hence, the AM market has grown rapidly and generated revenue of more than USD 1 billion for manufacturers of AM machines and service providers (Wohlers Associates, 2011). Guo and Leu (Guo & Leu, 2013) explained that this evolution is due to the varying opportunities offered by the AM compared to other manufacturing processes in terms of the exploitation of geometric complexity, the use of new classes of materials (e.g. functionally gradient materials), the widespread of new, open-architecture controllers for AM machines, and embedding of components during the fabrication process, etc. But despite these advantages, the use of AM is still limited due to defects in surface finish as well as low dimensional and geometrical accuracy which hamper their suitability for net shape manufacturing (Insaf Bahnini et al., 2020). The large divergence between design requirements and manufactured parts' specifications is on account of (i) non-consideration of the physical phenomena involved during the manufacturing process early in the design phase (Boyard, 2015), coupled with (ii) difficulties of upstream prediction of the manufactured parts’ quality (Huang, 2018).

Consequently, the proposed method in this paper aims to characterize the capability of FDM process in terms of dimensional accuracy of parts manufactured using two materials; Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and ULTRAT (a specific material developed by Zortrax; the constructor of Zortrax m200 machine). The diversity in material usage will not only assist in adjusting the process parameters along with defining optimal combination resulting in high-quality end parts, but will also help in highlighting the tolerances that the machine is likely to reach. The paper is, therefore, divided as follows: Section 2 provides the concerned literature review; Section 3 discusses the materials and methods, including the step-by-step process adopted for the proposed methodology and the experimental procedure; Section 4 presents and discusses the statistical analysis and the validation of test results; and finally, Section 5 concludes the article.