BENCHMARKING ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
30390567
S. SHYLESH KUMAR
ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing is a rapid prototyping process used to bring products to the market
quickly with less lead times. Complexity for free and low buy to fly ratio are the key advantages of this
technology. Normally benchmarking refers to the method of comparing two or more methods, designs,
practices etc. Here we are designing and printing a part in Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), a 3d
printing technology and then we will measure the values to benchmark it. We have discussed here about
the design methodology, printing technology and measuring methods used. We will also see a pictorial
representation of the designed product for a clear understanding.
INTRODUCTION
There are different types of benchmarking. when a new method is implied or new
product is introduced in an industry that is widely spread across the world, the methodology or
the new product will be subjected to a “Internal Benchmarking” category. Here the newly
designed product will be compared with the existing one in the industry. Our first priority here
is to design a part that will be benchmarked. There are many designing tools available to design
the product. But the product file to be 3d printed must be in a. stl format. Now we are going to
design a part that has to be printed in FDM method.
FDM is a layer by layer deposition process of a plastic filament which creates a physical
object directly from a computer aided design. With a proper digital model, we can print a 3d
product layer by layer by continuously extruding the heated plastic filament from a nozzle tip.
This method also has its own limitations and constraints. The model to be printed here is
designed using the solid works software.
Figure 1: Free body model designed in solid works
A solid modelling CAD software was used to design this mild complex structure. Our
aim here is to print the part and compare it with the traditional methods. So, by considering the
simple criteria’s like dimensions and surface finish we can achieve the benchmarking of AM
for this particular design.
Background
Fused Deposition Modelling – Upbox
The upbox 3d printer used by us consists of a stable fixed bed and a nozzle that has x
and y translating motion accompanied by a vertical motion in the z direction. It has a build
volume of 10 litres (255*205*205). A stepper motor is used to drive the pulley system with
belts and also the extrusion system which has the capability to feed about 1.75 mm ABS
filament. It gives a detail up to 100 microns, an ultra-fine HD detail. A fully automatic levelling
with integrated levelling probe helps to prevent the human interactions with the printing
material. We here use a software that accepts the STL format that can be used from the system
to feed the data to the upbox.
Figure 2: A pictorial representation of upbox 3d--- printer with its specifications
Benchmarking model development
The benchmarking prototype was designed to access the geometrical and dimensional
tolerances, sizes of the features, accuracy in dimensions and repeatability that were all
subjected to be built within a small envelope of upbox 3d printer. The parameters for the
benchmarked model was fabricated as in the table represented below. It took almost 3 hours to
print the part with 2 attempts in which first one was a failure. During the first attempt only, half
of the portion of the part was fabricated while the other half was not printed, even the hole to
be printed in the centre of the star was not fabricated. This will be discussed further in detail.
First, we can have the parameters of the designed part in a table that has to be compared with
the final outcome, benchmarked 3d printed part.
Table 1: Feature description of benchmarked models.
FEATURES IDENTIFICATION DESCRIPTION EVALUATION
Base B1
