Investigation on the properties of chemically treated flexible parts fabricated through material extrusion based additive manufacturing technology

The poor strength and surface texture of the additively manufactured components has restricted its usage as a functional part. The post processing methods can overcome this limitation and open new opportunities in different application areas. In the present study, chemical finishing process has been employed for the flexible components build through material extrusion based additive manufacturing technology. Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) has been chosen as the material for printing flexible parts. Taguchi orthogonal array-based design of experiments has been employed. Three process parameters that is, solvent type, infill density and immersion time have been selected for the study. The percentage improvement in the surface roughness as physical property and compressive strength as mechanical property has been chosen as the response parameters. The dimensional deviation was investigated by measuring the change in the dimensions of the manufactured components. It has been observed from ANOVA analysis that the improvement in surface roughness and compressive strength depends significantly on the immersion time. The Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solvent and immersion time of 125 s has been found significant for different properties of the chemically treated TPU parts.