Title: An application of Taguchi's technique to improve the accuracy of rapid prototyped FDM parts

Authors: Y. Ravi Kumar

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Warangal, 506 004, India

Abstract: Rapid prototyping (RP) is finding applications in diverse fields in the industry today, with prototypes used for form, fit and function. Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of the rapid prototyping techniques and widely used for design verification. A step ahead, FDM prototypes are to be used as end products or for soft tooling applications, the accuracy of the prototypes has to be improved. This work presents an experimental design technique for determining the optimal accuracy of a part built by the FDM process. The design investigates the effect of the parameters, layer thickness, road width, air gap and speed on the accuracy. Experiments were conducted using Taguchi technique with three levels for each factor. This paper discusses the results of the study and the conclusions arrived from it.

Keywords: ANOVA; design of experiments; DOE; fused deposition modelling; FDM; optimisation; parametric tuning; rapid prototyping; RP; Taguchi methods.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMATEI.2012.049263

International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation, 2012 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.228 - 246

Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article