Investigation of tensile property-based Taguchi method of PLA parts fabricated by FDM 3D printing technology

In Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) three-dimensional (3D) printing the printed part is greatly affected by the process parameters, therefore the parameters have to select properly to enhance the characteristics of the final product. In view of this, the present paper experimentally and statistically studied the effect of various printing parameters namely build orientation, raster orientation, nozzle diameter, extruder temperature, infill density, shell number, and extruding speed on tensile strength using Polylactic acid (PLA) filament. Based on Taguchi's mixed model fractional factorial design, eighteen experiments were set and the specimens of PLA are printed on an FDM 3D printer and tested for tensile strength using the universal testing machine. Thereafter, the optimal combination of the parameters was selected using Signal-to-Noise ratio (S/N), and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used for indicating the significant parameters and their effect on tensile strength. Moreover, a linear regression model has been developed to predict the tensile strength of the printed part. The results showed that the part strength influenced by the selected process parameters, where only three of them, build orientation (on-edge), nozzle diameter (0.5), and infill density (100%) statistically were significant and highly impact the result. While build orientation has the most influential effect on tensile strength (44.68%). Lastly, the confirmation test showed that there is a good agreement between the experimental and statistical data.