Abstract
Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing technology for rapid prototyping that can build intricate parts in minimal time with least human intervention. The process parameters such as layer thickness, orientation, raster angle, raster width and air gap largely influence on dimensional accuracy of built parts which can be expressed as change in length, width and thickness. This paper presents experimental data and a fuzzy decision making logic in integration with the Taguchi method for improving the dimensional accuracy of FDM processed ABSP 400 parts. It is observed that length and width decreases but thickness shows positive deviation from desired value of the built part. Experimental results indicate that optimal factor settings for each response are different. Therefore, all the three responses are expressed in a single response index through fuzzy logic approach. The process parameters are optimized with consideration of all the performance characteristics simultaneously. Finally, an inference engine is developed to perform the inference operations on the rules for fuzzy prediction model based on Mamdani method. Experimental results are provided to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The predicted results are in good agreement with the values from the experimental data with average percentage error of less than 4.5.
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
