Can Different Parameter Sets Lead to Equivalent Optima between Geometric Accuracy and Mechanical Properties in Arburg Plastic Freeforming? †

Technological advances have led to the increased use of plastic-based additive manufacturing processes for the production of consumer goods and spare parts. For this reason, the need for the best possible mechanical properties while maintaining geometric accuracy is becoming increasingly important. One of these additive manufacturing processes is the Arburg Plastic Freeforming process, which differs from the widely used Fused Filament Fabrication process in the way that droplets are discharged along a track instead of continuous extruded tracks. As with all other plastic-based additive manufacturing processes, due to the round shape of the tracks, voids occur between the individual tracks during manufacturing, which effects mechanical properties. In contrast to previous work, which mainly focused on how the mechanical properties change with a change in a single printing parameter, this work focused more closely on the interaction of three relevant printing parameters considered as a parameter set. Their influence on the mechanical properties was investigated by tensile tests, the influence on the residual porosity by density measurements and the influence on the geometric accuracy by surface roughness measurements. It was shown that by considering the parameters as a parameter set, states of high density and therefore high mechanical properties while reaching minimal surface roughness can be achieved for significantly more combinations than previously assumed. However, for these states the residual porosity was slightly different. This difference was explained by a parameter-dependent deformation factor of the droplets, which influences the maximal possible degree of filling during manufacturing. For the optimization of arbitrary parameter sets, an analytical model was derived.