Multi-Objective Optimization of Fused Deposition Modeling Process Parameters For Printing Acrylonitrile- Butadiene-Styrene Polymer Parts

Abstract

The Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the widely used additive manufacturing process to produce prototypes as well as functional parts from thermoplastics. However, the application of FDM is still limited for printing useful end products due to part qualities like surface quality, mechanical properties, and printing time. To mitigate this, process param eters are optimized to improve only single part characteristics as reported in the literatures. But, it is very essential to have a proper set of process parameters such as layer thickness, print speed, extrusion temperature, raster angle and other parameters to improve performance of FDM. Thus, in this study, the multi-objective optimization of fused deposition model ing process parameters for printing Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene polymer (ABS) parts is presented. The parameters such as Layer thickness, print speed, extrusion temperature and raster angle are considered for the part characteristics such as tensile strength, surface roughness, and Printing time. The quadratic equations are formulated for tensile strength, surface roughness, and printing time using response surface method depending on experi mental data’s. To determine the significance of various terms in the equations analysis of variance (ANOVA) is employed. A multi-objective optimization using genetic algorithm (gamultiobj) is used to simultaneously simulate the resulting objective functions of tensile strength, surface roughness, and printing time. The optimization results provide informa tion on the combined impacts of the layer thickness, printing speed, extrusion temperature and raster angle on printing time, surface roughness, and tensile strength. The Combined compromise solution (CoCoSo) method is applied to identify the best solution from the 18 optimum alternative solutions, with the corresponding values of surface roughness, printing time and tensile strength which is equal to 3.47µm, 19.97minutes and 38.1Mpa respectively. Hence, the best optimal combination of process parameters with 0.36mm layer thickness, 68.49mm/s printing speed, 230.320C extrusion temperature and 42.590 raster angle is sug gested for printing of ABS parts by FMD.