Experimental investigation of extrusion speed and temperature effects on arithmetic mean surface roughness in fdmbuilt specimens

Abstract

Surface roughness remains one of the soft spots of FDM technology in general, while the problem is specially pronounced in the domain of 3D printers for personal use. Extrusion speed and extrusion temperature are two controllable parameters which, other than layer thickness, have greatest impact on the surface quality of FDM-built parts. Analyzed in this paper is the influence of extrusion speed and temperature on the arithmetic average of the roughness profile (Ra) of FDM specimens. A 2² factorial experiment was used with two replicas and two center points. The results indicate a dominant, statistically significant influence of extrusion speed, as well as the pronounced nonlinearity of effects.