Modeling of surface roughness based on heat transfer considering diffusion among deposition filaments for FDM 3D printing heat-resistant resin

Abstract A new approach was proposed to model the surface roughness considering diffusion among deposition filaments for fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing heat-resistant resin in this work. Generally molten polymer undergoes depositing, cooling, solidifying and finally bonding with the other connected filaments during the FDM processing. However, for heat-resistant resin, the wetting and diffusion between deposition filaments occur more obviously due to higher melting temperature and platform temperature than that of ordinary polymers, such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), poly lactic acid (PLA). Based on the theory of thermal analysis of bonding formation, the mechanism model of surface roughness was established. Most of printing parameters, including nozzle temperature, printing speed, layer thickness, deposition road width as well temperature of printing platform, were taken into consideration on how to ameliorate the surface morphology of printed parts. In addition, several FDM 3D printing experiments were carried out in order to verify the validity of the model. The experimental surface roughness agrees well with the results calculated by the model. The model can help to predict the surface roughness of printed heat-resistant parts and provide the optimized 3D printing parameters for efficient process planning.