Influence of Building Position and Printing Scheme on Mechanical Properties of Fused Filament Fabrication PLA Specimens

The recent improvement of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies has been attracting the industry and research community attention. This paper aims to investigate the influence of building position and printing scheme on the tensile mechanical properties of Tough polylactic acid (PLA) material, manufactured through a fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing – the S5 ProBundle Ultimaker. FDM 3D printing, also known as fused filament fabrication (FFF), is an AM process within the realm of material extrusion. FDM builds parts Layer by Layer by selectively depositing melted material in a predetermined path, and uses thermoplastic polymers that come in the form of filaments. In this paper, AM Tough PLA specimens are manufactured according to ASTM-D638 requirement considering two different positions on the building plate and two printing schemes. Specimens are tested under static tensile test and the mechanical properties are extracted.