Ultrasonic treatment of 3D-printed Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

The 3D printing technology allows the production of parts with complex geometry quickly. However, the printed parts have poor mechanical properties due to the nature of their layers and the presence of defects such as cavities and poor adhesion between the layers. This paper investigates the use of ultrasonic vibrations to improve the mechanical properties of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene printed components. Samples were fabricated with standard geometry of tensile test using a desktop 3D FDM printer. Process parameters are layer thickness and infill. Also, the time of ultrasonic imposing was selected as a variable parameter. The thickness of the print layers are 0.15, 0.2, and 0.30 mm, and the infill is 60, 80, and 100%. The design of the experiment was performed by the response level method. Then the uniaxial tensile test was performed on the samples, and the data were analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed that the application of ultrasonic vibrations significantly improves the tensile strength of printed parts, which is greater in lower thickness. Also, with increasing the infill, the effect of ultrasonic vibrations increases, which can be due to better bonding of the print layers due to ultrasonic vibrations and reducing the number of pores in the low infill values. Therefore, it is found that by applying ultrasonic vibrations to the 3D printed samples, their mechanical properties were improved and could be used in performance evaluation.