The effect of layer height on the surface roughness in 3D Printed Polylactic Acid (PLA) using FDM 3D printing

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to investigate the surface roughness and the time consume printing on PLA material using FDM 3D printing on differences in layer height. A 3D printer machine, Creality Ender 3 was involved to manufacture the specimen. Furthermore, they tested with the SurftestSJ-301 Mitutoyo device to determine the roughness of surface object. The height of the test specimen layer varies from 0.05 mm to 0.25 mm with the increment of 0.5 mm for each variation, while the layer angle keep constant at zero degree (0°). Surface roughness and print time are analysed to determine the best design parameters. The test results show that, the greater of layer height has the rougher of the surface. In addition, the printing time is inversely proportional to surface roughness. The smallest of surface roughness occurs on the 0.05 mm of layer height, whereas the lowest occurs on the 0.25 mm of layer height. In addition, the optimize parameter occurs on 0.15 mm and 0.2 mm of layer height which surface roughness and printing time are 9.11 μm and 158 min respectively (Lh 0.15 mm), while the layer height of 0.20 mm for 120 min and 10.48 μm.