Abstract Thermoplastic materials such as Polylactic acid (PLA), Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and Nylon 6 have made extensive use of fused filament manufacturing (FFM) process, but little is known about how material-specific process parameters affect mechanical processes according to manufacturing cost and product performance. This present investigation fills these gaps by deciphering the understudied links between the surface improvisation and characteristic property enhancement through FFM process. In this research, the aforementioned thermoplastic materials are manufactured in the form of test specimens as per the American society for testing and material(ASTM) standard and undergone with silinization process for enhancing the matrix stress transfer and interlayer stability. Few interesting improvements like less porosity in PLA, interlayer adhesion in ABS and grouped polymer structures in the Nylon 6 were noticed in structural evaluation, these findings exhibit pivotal role in improving the flexural stiffness (~54.22 MPa) and toughness (4.83 J) owing to strong interlayer bonding and semi-crystalline phases. ABS exhibited anisotropic interfaces during bonding and interaction of internal-thermal stresses, these phenomena created potential weak points and resulted with slight reduction of flextural strength (~1.08 MPa) and tensile strength ~5.22 MPa than PLA specimens. Compared with PLA and ABS, superior bonding and molecular orientation has exhibited highest tensile strength (~48.5 MPa) in the Nylon 6 specimen. Moreover, Nylon 6 has provided glass transition 60°C and a broad melting peak ~ 220°C with better thermal stability. Anisotropy and molecular interactions determine fluctuating Shore D hardness values also the formation of unique fracture patterns exhibits distinct features for all three test specimens. Obtained results in the context reveals the improvements in quality and process stability of the FFM process and its utilization in producing the components with reasonable cost.
Ramesh et al. (Tue,) studied this question.