Effect of Printing Parameters on the Internal Geometry of Products Manufactured by Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)

The internal geometry of a 3D-printed product determines its mechanical properties. In Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) the filaments that build up the internal geometry suffer from variations that have not been sufficiently studied. This research focused on identifying the parameters that most affect the filaments and finding the optimum values to reduce their variations. A fractional factorial design of experiments was used to detect the printing parameters of FFF that most affect the width of extruded filaments, these results were also statistically analyzed. A response optimization was done to obtain the values of the printing parameters that will give the closest width of extruded filaments to the nozzle of the 3D printer used. Results showed layer height has the largest impact on filament width variation.