Experimental Investigation of Laser Cutting Post Process of Additive Manufactured Parts of Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) by 3D Printers Using FDM Method

3D printing technology is used in a variety of industries without auxiliary tools because it is flexible in producing and reduces the waste of material. In this paper, the laser cutting process of polylactic acid sheets has been investigated by a 3D printer. The fused deposition modeling (FDM) method was used for printing the sheets. Production of sheets with a thickness of 2.3 mm by optimal conditions was conducted (each layer was perfectly solid with a thickness of 0.27 mm, and the extruder temperature of 226.62 °C). The laser used in this paper is a CO2 low-power, continuous-wave laser. Laser input parameters including laser cutting speed, focal point position, and laser power were selected as the variables. By performing several experiments, the effective range of each parameter was evaluated. The upper and lower cut width, the angle of cone and the upper cut width ratio to the lower cut width of the process output parameters were selected. The optical microscope was used to examine the geometric characteristics of cutting kerf of the samples and then the images were measured using ImageJ software. The purpose of this paper is the laser cutting process to achieve cutting kerfs with good quality and proper setting of laser input parameters.