Indian Journal of Engineering & Materials Sciences

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Experimental Investigation on Abrasive Flow Finishing of FDM Printed Polymeric Spur Gear


Affiliations
1 Advanced Manufacturing and Mechatronics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302 017, India
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500 043, India
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, GLA University, Mathura 281 406, India
4 Division of Research and Development, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara 144 411, India

Recently the use of polymers has seen significant growth in manufacturing industries. Polymeric gear is applied in automation, material handling systems, toys and some household applications. At the same time, there are numerous benefits of additive manufacturing techniques. Three dimensional (3D) printed products and components have a wide range of applications, which are growing day by day. The outer surface of the 3D printing process suffers from poor finishing due to layer addition. In this study, abrasive flow machining (AFM) is utilised to assess how well polymeric gears created using fused deposition modelling are finished (FDM). In this study, abrasive flow machining (AFM) is utilised to assess how well polymeric gears created using fused deposition modelling are finished (FDM). The study develops an AFM medium from coal-ash powder, EDM oil, and glycerin. AFM medium viscosity and process parameters have been improved to improve surface quality. Using the statistical program Minitab, a Taguchi L9 Design of Experiments (DOE) has been generated to optimize parameters and establish a functional relationship between the output parameter, surface roughness, and the input variables, which included layer thickness, abrasive concentration, mesh size of abrasive, and finishing time. An analysis has been carried out to optimize the parameters of the abrasive flow machining (AFM) medium in order to improve the surface quality of polymeric gears that are created using fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology. The ideal parameters have been determined to be 33% abrasive concentration, 220 abrasive mesh size, 60% liquid synthesizer, 0.46 Pa/sec media viscosity, 0.1 layer thickness, and 90 minutes completion time. An improvement of 95.37%, from 10.80 µm to 0.50 µm, in the surface imperfection of FDM-printed polymeric gears has been achieved through the efficient optimization of the AFM medium and process parameters. Surface quality of FDM-printed polymeric gears can be enhanced using AFM as a post-processing approach.

Keywords

Additive manufacturing (AM), Fused deposition modelling (FDM), Abrasive flow machining (AFM), AFM media
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  • Experimental Investigation on Abrasive Flow Finishing of FDM Printed Polymeric Spur Gear

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Authors

Rajhans Meena
Advanced Manufacturing and Mechatronics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302 017, India
Ch Sandeep
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500 043, India
Piyush Singhal
Department of Mechanical Engineering, GLA University, Mathura 281 406, India
Kuldeep Kumar Saxena
Division of Research and Development, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara 144 411, India
Harlal Singh Mali
Advanced Manufacturing and Mechatronics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302 017, India

Abstract


Recently the use of polymers has seen significant growth in manufacturing industries. Polymeric gear is applied in automation, material handling systems, toys and some household applications. At the same time, there are numerous benefits of additive manufacturing techniques. Three dimensional (3D) printed products and components have a wide range of applications, which are growing day by day. The outer surface of the 3D printing process suffers from poor finishing due to layer addition. In this study, abrasive flow machining (AFM) is utilised to assess how well polymeric gears created using fused deposition modelling are finished (FDM). In this study, abrasive flow machining (AFM) is utilised to assess how well polymeric gears created using fused deposition modelling are finished (FDM). The study develops an AFM medium from coal-ash powder, EDM oil, and glycerin. AFM medium viscosity and process parameters have been improved to improve surface quality. Using the statistical program Minitab, a Taguchi L9 Design of Experiments (DOE) has been generated to optimize parameters and establish a functional relationship between the output parameter, surface roughness, and the input variables, which included layer thickness, abrasive concentration, mesh size of abrasive, and finishing time. An analysis has been carried out to optimize the parameters of the abrasive flow machining (AFM) medium in order to improve the surface quality of polymeric gears that are created using fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology. The ideal parameters have been determined to be 33% abrasive concentration, 220 abrasive mesh size, 60% liquid synthesizer, 0.46 Pa/sec media viscosity, 0.1 layer thickness, and 90 minutes completion time. An improvement of 95.37%, from 10.80 µm to 0.50 µm, in the surface imperfection of FDM-printed polymeric gears has been achieved through the efficient optimization of the AFM medium and process parameters. Surface quality of FDM-printed polymeric gears can be enhanced using AFM as a post-processing approach.

Keywords


Additive manufacturing (AM), Fused deposition modelling (FDM), Abrasive flow machining (AFM), AFM media