Experimental Investigations for Surface Roughness and Dimensional Accuracy of FDM Components with Barrel Finishing

The present research work is aimed at experimental investigations for surface roughness and dimensional accuracy of fused deposition modeling (FDM) parts through barrel finishing (BF) by using Taguchi L18 OA (as a case study). Six controllable parameters of FDM and BF namely; geometry of FDM parts, parts layer density, part orientation, shape of BF media, weight of media and finishing cycle time were studied, by considering one parameter of two levels and five parameters of three levels, to find out their affect on surface roughness and dimensional accuracy of FDM part. The combined optimization performed by considering both output parameters of equal importance resulted into high composite desirability (≈0.98). Additionally, scanning electron microscopic graphs and surface roughness profiles have been studied for better understanding the mechanism involved in finishing of FDM parts.