Title: Effective process parameters in selective laser sintering

Authors: W. Ruban; V. Vijayakumar; P. Dhanabal; T. Pridhar

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Sri Krishna College of Technology, Coimbatore 641042, India ' Mechanical Engineering Department, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore 641004, India ' Mechanical Engineering Department, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore 641004, India ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Sri Krishna College of Technology, Coimbatore 641042, India

Abstract: Selective laser sintering (SLS) is a powder-based rapid prototyping (RP) technology in which parts is built by CO₂ laser. This research work presents an optimal method to determine the best processing parameter for SLS in order to fabricate parts with enhanced component integrity and reduced overall costs using stainless steel material. Moreover, the optimum process parameters, such as layer thickness, hatch spacing, laser power and part bed temperature are obtained by adopting the Taguchi method based on the Design of Experiment model for better surface finish, dimensional accuracy and hardness. Experiments are planned by using Taguchi's L12 orthogonal array. The level of importance of the process parameters are determined by using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The experimental results confirmed that the validity of the used Taguchi method for enhancing the SLS performance and optimising the process parameters in the stainless steel material based SLS rapid manufacturing process.

Keywords: RP; rapid prototyping; SLS; selective laser sintering; Taguchi methods; optimisation; process parameters; stainless steel; layer thickness; hatch spacing; laser power; part bed temperature; DOE; design of experiments; surface finish; dimensional accuracy; hardness; orthogonal arrays; analysis of variance; ANOVA; rapid manufacturing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRAPIDM.2014.066036

International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing, 2014 Vol.4 No.2/3/4, pp.148 - 164

Received: 17 Apr 2014
Accepted: 10 Jul 2014
Published online: 30 Nov 2014 *

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