Temperature-dependent mechanical properties of ABS parts fabricated by fused deposition modeling and vapor smoothing

3D printing technologies have gotten an attention as a viable option for future manufacturing. Among them, FDM is the most popular one because it is inexpensive and can process with multiples materials. Layered surface, that has high roughness, is obtained with the technology due to layer-by-layer based process. This result highly decreases value of the final product. Various methods for postprocessing were proposed to achieve fine surface. Among them, vapor smoothing process is one of powerful methods because of its cost-effectiveness and usefulness. However, this process could affect mechanical property of the printed structure. In this study, we investigated the effect of the vapor smoothing technique with 3D printed structures in terms of thermal-dependent mechanical property. ABS structure was fabricated with FDM and applied into the post-processing. Then, temperature-dependent storage modulus and tan δ of the structure were measured with dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) in the variation of amount of acetone. The results showed that the process highly affects to the thermal stability. Below 50°C, any differences were not observed. However, lower modulus and higher tan δ were shown in the higher temperature. This experiment provides very useful data for FEM simulation to predict mechanical property of a 3D printed structure.