Relation between surface roughness and overlap interval in Fused Deposition Modeling

Abstract

Rapid prototyping (RP) can efficiently fabricate high level models with complex shapes. Hence the RP has been widely applied in various industrial fields. However, as the technology is inherently performed by layered manufacturing process, the surface quality of the RP part is not satisfactory to use general industrial purpose. This is the reason that surface roughness problem has been key issue in RP. In this paper, relation between surface roughness and overlap interval is investigated based on a surface roughness formulation in fused deposition modeling (FDM). Additionally, effects of surface angle and filament shape are analyzed and discussed to predict surface roughness distribution by the overlap interval variation.