A comprehensive study on the effects of printing parameters on the mechanical properties of PLA

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the effects of five different printing parameters, namely, printing speed (PS), printing temperature/nozzle temperature/extrusion temperature, heated-bed temperature, raster angle (RA) and layer height (LT), on mechanical properties.

Design/methodology/approach

American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards were used for the specimen design. Then, the Taguchi method was used for the design of the experiment and an L16 orthogonal array was preferred. Tensile, Shore D and surface roughness tests were conducted on polylactic acid test specimens. The test results were analyzed using the signal-to-noise ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Findings

As a result of the study, it was seen that RA is the most important parameter for the tensile strength, PS is for the hardness and LT is for the surface roughness. According to the ANOVA results, the effects of the RA, PS and LT on the maximum tensile strength, hardness and surface roughness were 41.59%, 69.51% and 44.6%, respectively.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the most comprehensive parameter optimization studies for additive manufacturing in the literature because it includes five different printing parameters and three mechanical test procedures.

Citation

Turan, M.K., Sabirli, M.Ü., Bakirci, A., Kartal, E. and Karpat, F. (2024), "A comprehensive study on the effects of printing parameters on the mechanical properties of PLA", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-03-2024-0137