The Investigation of Process Temperature and Infill Rate on Mechanical Characteristic of Polylactic Acid (PLA) via Fused Deposition Modeling

Additive manufacturing (AM) is popular in recently years; it has the benefits of having highly flexible features and being sustainable. It is commonly applicated in construction industry, biomedicine technology, engineering applications, etc. Among AM methods, fused deposition modeling (FDM) is a method of low cost and technical threshold and has a less consumables. This paper aims to explore the mechanical characteristic of 3D-printed part via FDM by adjusting two processing parameters such as infill rate and process temperature. The polylactic acid (PLA) material was studied via tensile test; the difference in mechanical characteristic was investigated with and without the UV curing process. The findings indicate that with the increasing infill rate or the process temperature, the tensile characteristics of the PLA material have significantly improved. The enhancement of the elastic modulus and the reduction of the tensile strength and elongation could be summarized.