Investigating the Mechanical Properties of 3D Printed Components

Additive manufacturing (AM) has acquired an increasing interest from industrial, academic, and research fields in the last few decades. One of the AM techniques that is overgrowing and gripping more attention is Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). 3D printed parts with FDM are being considered in replacing traditionally manufactured parts made with traditional materials. Hence, comes the need for understanding the mechanical behavior of printed parts to evaluate its eligibility for any given application. However, knowledge established is lacking information about 3D printing materials mechanical properties. From here comes the aim of this paper, which is to investigate the compression properties of PLA 3D printed samples. Furthermore, to examine the consistency of mechanical behavior over duplicated 3D printed samples. Specimens would be 3D printed by the FDM technique under the same 3D print conditions to minimize and -or if possible- eliminate the impact of unwanted factors on compressive properties of the material.