Determination of optimal parameters in selective laser sintering for minimizing the part warping based on Taguchi method

Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is a method to build parts by adding layer-upon-layer of material. The selective laser sintering (SLS) method is one of the most important methods of additive manufacturing processes. The low time and the variety of materials used to build the parts are major advantages of SLS method. The high quality of the product is one of the main goals in the additive manufacturing processes. The part warping is one of the factors that reduce the quality of the products which are built by the SLS process. The hatching patterns and scan algorithms in the SLS process are important factors that affect the product quality. In this paper, the effective parameters of the SLS processes such as the scan vector length and the number of offsets or contours, the laser power, the laser speed, and the hitching spacing are optimally determined to minimize the part warping of the product based on the finite element simulations and Taguchi method. For this reason, SLS process has been modeled on the SLS process. Then, to illustrate and validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method, and the computational results are compared to the obtained results from the experimental tests Using SLS containing CO2 laser. Finally, using the Taguchi design of Experiments, the process parameters have been changed at different levels and optimal parameters have been obtained.