Some investigations for small-sized product fabrication with FDM for plastic components Rupinder Singh Department of Production Engineering, Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana, Ludhiana, India Abstract Purpose – Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing technology commonly used for modelling, prototyping, and batch production applications. The purpose of this paper is to investigate properties of plastic replicas, fabricated as small-sized product moulds with FDM. Design/methodology/approach – From the identification of component, prototypes of ABS plastic material were prepared for commercial end-user applications, such as vacuum moulding, vacuum casting, investment casting, etc. Findings – The study highlighted the best settings of orientation and support material quantity for the selected component on FDM machine, from the dimensional accuracy and economic points of view. Originality/value – Final replicas prepared are acceptable as per DIN 16901 and ISO (UNI EN 20286-I-1995) standard for industrial applications. The results are also supported by SEM analysis. Keywords Plastics, Manufacturing systems, Fused deposition modeling, Work piece dimensions, Plastic components, SEM analysis Paper type Research paper Introduction Fused deposition modeling (FDM) uses computer aided design (CAD) based automated additive manufacturing process to construct parts that are used directly as finished products or components (Pandey and Reddy, 2001). Although current FDM systems are being successfully used in specialist applications for the production of end-user parts, however many problems are still unsolved (Thrimurthulu et al., 2004; Singh, 2010, 2011). Currently rapid manufacturing processes are in a transition stage, where manufacturing facilities are being used for specialist, low-volume and customized products but in true manufacturing sense that is of a sufficient speed, cost and quality acceptable to general consumer does not exist at present (Chua and Leong, 1997; Ainsworth et al., 2000; Anitha and Arunachalam, 2001; Rao and Padmanabhan, 2007; Singh and Verma, 2008). FDM technique is being widely used in industry to prepare plastic functional parts (Rodriguez et al., 2000). It is the one of the simplest rapid tooling technique (Reddy and Reddy, 2007; Singh, 2010). In this process, material like ABS, elastomer, polycarbonate, poly-phenolsulphone and investment casting wax feeds into the temperature-controlled FDM extrusion head, where it is heated to a semi-liquid state (Sood et al., 2009; Chhabra and Singh, 2011). The head extrudes and deposits the material in thin layers onto a fixtureless base (Rodrı ´guez et al., 2001). The head directs the material into place with precision, as each layer is extruded; it bonds to the previous layer and solidifies. The designed object emerges as a solid three-dimensional part without the need for tooling (Sood et al., 2010; Kumar et al., 2010; Singh, 2011). Rodriguez et al. (2000) studied the mechanical properties of the FDM1600 feedstock material and the mechanical behavior of unidirectional FD-ABS materials with three different meso- structures. The mechanical behavior of the ABS mono filament and the FD-ABS specimens were found to be different, with a substantial reduction in both stiffness and strength for FD- ABS, influenced by the meso-structure. Some reduction in strain at yield could be observed, and the FD-ABS specimens were found to fail in two different modes. A relatively tough response was exhibited by the longitudinal specimens with fracture surfaces normal to the load direction and surrounded by a highly whitened region. Further, Rodrı ´guez et al. (2001) measured void densities on the principal material planes and the extent of circumferential fiber to fiber bonding as a function of fiber to fiber gap, flow rate and processing temperatures. It was found that a slightly negative gap minimized the voids and maximized the extent of bonding. Some researchers have highlighted effect of optimal orientation with variable slicing in rapid prototyping processes (Cheng et al., 1995; Xu et al., 1997). In the present work, the process of FDM has been used to manufacture the pen drive/memory stick cover as a case study of small-sized mould fabrication, under different conditions of orientation and support material quantity for industrial applications. The tolerance grades of the specimens manufactured on best settings has been calculated as per ISO standard UNI EN 20286-I (1995) and final verifications were made as per DIN16901 standard. There are four sections in this paper. Following this introduction section, experimentation section describes the experimental details. In third section, the results have been presented and discussed. Conclusions are drawn up in the last section. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1355-2546.htm Rapid Prototyping Journal 19/1 (2013) 58–63 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 1355-2546] [DOI 10.1108/13552541311292745] The author is grateful to DST, New Delhi for financial support. Received: 4 March 2011 Revised: 6 June 2011, 28 January 2012 Accepted: 30 January 2012 58