Determining the effect of sintering conditions on mechanical properties of laser sintered glass filled polyamide parts using RSM

Selective laser sintering (SLS) applications are rapidly growing in various sectors such as automobile, aeronautics, biomedical and custom consumer products. The properties of SLS made parts exhibit high dependence on the settings of process parameters, which can be improved by choosing and adjusting sintering conditions accurately. Poor strength and anisotropic nature of SLS part makes it imperative to study the effect of process parameters on the mechanical properties to enhance their service life. Hence, present work deals with the study to examine the influence of key process parameters such as, part bed temperature, laser power, scan speed, and scan spacing on different mechanical properties such as, ultimate tensile strength, % elongation, yield strength, and Young's modulus. Face centered central composite design (FCCCD) of response surface methodology (RSM) technique was used to plan experiments. Test specimens according to ASTM D638 standard were fabricated using glass filled polyamide (PA 3200GF) material, and regression models were developed to correlate the process parameters to the respective experimental design response. Further, these process parameters have been optimized for maximizing mechanical properties using desirability function approach. Moreover, sensitivity analysis results indicate that mechanical properties of sintered parts are highly influenced by scan speed and scan spacing variations than others. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.