Effect of Printing Parameters on Mechanical Properties and Dimensional Accuracy of 316L Stainless Steel Fabricated by Fused Filament Fabrication

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the most popular extrusion based metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) Technologies, which has unique advantages in the rapid prototyping of thermoplastic materials, enabling the fabrication of metal parts with low mechanical anisotropy and no residual stress. However, the mechanical properties and dimensional accuracy of FFF printed parts are susceptible to changes in various printing parameters, which affects the FFF application in large-scale manufacturing. This study experimentally studied the effect of various printing parameters namely layer thickness (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 mm), raster angle (0°, 90°, + 45°/−45°, and 0°/90°), raster width (0.3, 0.35, 0.4, and 0.45 mm), and infill density (70, 80, 90, and 100%) on mechanical properties and dimensional accuracy of 316L stainless steel fabricated by FFF. The results showed that the infill density was the most important factor affecting the mechanical properties, followed by the layer thickness, and it was found that higher values of infill density and lower layer thickness result in better tensile strength. Layer thickness was also the main factor affecting the dimensional accuracy, which increased with the decrease in the layer thickness.