Copyright © 2018 Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (3.17) (2018) 21-24 International Journal of Engineering & Technology Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET Research paper Vibration Analysis of Fused Deposition Modelling Printed Lattice Structure Bar for Application in Automated Device M. S. Azmi 1 , R. Ismail 1,2 , R. Hasan 1,2* and M. R. Alkahari 1,2 1 Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka 2 Centre for Advanced Research on Energy, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia *Corresponding author E-mail: rafidahhasan@utem.edu.my Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of size of strut radius to the natural frequencies of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) polymer lattice-structure bar material by using vibration technique. The lattice structured cellular material parts with body- centered-cubic (BCC) topological design are manufactured using fused deposition modeling (FDM) additive manufacturing (AM) tech- nique with aim to reduce the overall weight of automated device. The specimens are tested by using set up consist of fabricated test rig, accelerometer, force sensor, power amplifier, shaker and signal generator/analyzer. The first mode natural frequency obtained from the vibration testing for specimen with 1.0 mm strut radius is 278 Hz while specimen with 1.2 mm strut radius is 441 Hz. The results ob- tained from vibration testing show that bigger size of strut radius will yield higher natural frequencies and the lattice structure bar is suit- able for use as arm body part in automated device. By utilizing FDM AM, industry will be able to benefit in term of saving in fabrication cost as well as energy consumption. Keywords: fused deposition modeling; lattice structure material; lightweight application; natural frequency; vibration analysis. 1. Introduction The reduction of material consumption, fabrication cost and ener- gy in vehicles, machines and devices has been a great demand from the industry. In the industry that makes automated devices such as radio controlled (RC) cars and aeroplanes, the current performance of battery powered device is limited due to heavy body parts that caused higher power consumption for movement that will eventually affect the overall operational hours of the de- vice [1]. With this focus, to reduce the overall weight of body parts, structural properties, material selection and manufacturing technique must be continually improved. 1.1. Additive Manufacturing AM is the one of the major material fabrication process besides subtractive and formative manufacturing [2]. Subtractive manu- facturing includes computer numerical control (CNC), milling, grinding etc. that is mostly include machining processes while formative manufacturing includes bending, forging and injection molding etc. [2]. Amongst these three, only AM is able to fabri- cate complex structure as the other two has limitations due to its fabrication principles. AM builds 3D part by adding layer by layer from 3D computer aided design (CAD) file. AM has been used in many fields such as automotive, aerospace, consumer goods, and casting [3]. Among all AM, FDM is one of the simplest machine that is easy to maintain, cheaper to own, and uses lightweight thermoplastic solid material in the form of filament wire, making it most suitable technique to fabricate low cost strong plastic parts for use in au- tomated devices. FDM was first invented in early 1990s and wide- ly used due to its low-cost materials and very low waste compared to other technique [3]. The parts built by the FDM machine also show great potential with high manufacturing flexibility and com- plex structure design. 1.2. Lattice Structure Cellular structure material has been widely used as core material to improve energy absorption of the material [4]. The most popu- lar cellular structure used is honeycomb structure which proven to have high stiffness and strength to weight ratio [5]. Other common widely used cellular material is foam structure which also offers significant energy absorption performance [4]. Besides honey- comb and foam structure, another structure that shows high poten- tial thus rising interest between researchers is lattice structure. Fig. 1 shows the physical appearance of honeycomb, foam and lattice structure materials.