Effect of Process Parameters on Tensile Strength of Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol Material Specimens 3D Printed Using Material Extrusion

Material extrusion (ME) or Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the additive manufacturing methods in which the thermoplastic material is heated to the extrusion temperature and then extruded by the nozzle to add layer upon layer to prepare a three-dimensional part. The quality and mechanical properties of the material extruded 3D printed part depends on the selection of process parameter and material used to print any part. So, in the present study, the effect of an individual process parameter such as infill pattern, extrusion temperature and raster angle on the tensile strength of polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG) material is observed. It is a thermoplastic material with low cost and higher strength than other polymers. Tensile specimens are 3D printed as per the ASTM standard D638 with different combinations of parameters using the design of experiments and tested using a universal testing machine (UTM). As the outcome of this study, it is observed that the tensile strength increases with an increase in all the selected process parameters. Further, the rectilinear pattern, 240 0C extrusion temperature and 0/+450 raster angle is found to be the optimal set of parameter while the extrusion temperature is obtained as the most influencing parameter using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).