Experimental Evaluation of the best Orientation of Taper Plug to Minimize Support Material Required in 3D printing (FDM)

In the process of completing the Design of any machine Component, Prototyping or realistic Model Making is very important step. This process is useful to develop and improve the concept of a design. It is general procedure to fabricate a prototype and to test it, before the starting of the actual manufacturing. 3D printing or Rapid Prototyping is a generative or Additive Manufacturing method. This process is unlike metal machining, forming or subtractive processes such as turning, milling, grinding, or press work, etc., in which removal of excess material or metal deformation in the plastic state, is responsible for the shaping of the form of the work piece. In 3D printing process, a component is produced by adding of material by layers. This 3D printing technology is practically applied in various sectors such as Automobiles, Defense, Aero space technology, Ship Building, Bio-Medical applications, etc., The component is constructed by the material deposition in the form of layers which is shaped in a (x-y) plane two dimensionally in Fused Deposition Modeling process. FDM is one process in 3D printing Technology. Also, (z), third dimension is resulted from single layers being stacked up on the top of one by one. In the present experimental work, V 5 CATIA R 20 software is used to generate the 3D-CAD model for Taper Plug component, which consists of a base plate and taper plug. A number of components are produced by conducting several experiments on 3D printing FDM machine. Also, by changing the orientation of the component with respect to the X-axis, the actual components are produced. Every time, the requirement of the support material is noted. In order to fabricate the Taper Plug component with the condition of minimum requirement of support material, the Optimum or Best Orientation is experimentally evaluated.