Effects of a mass finishing process on parts produced from Ultem 9085 by Fused Deposition Modeling

Parts produced by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) tend to have rough and undulating surfaces with staircase effects on rounded and slanting areas of the part. This is due to the characteristics of the process. In many fields of application, high demands are made on the optical quality of the part. An improvement in the surface quality of FDM parts made of Ultem*9085 can be achieved through post-treatment with a mass finishing process. In this paper, FDM specimens are post-treated in a disk finishing unit. Influences of the mass finishing process are analyzed with regard to the dependence of surface quality on the various process parameters and on the finishing medium, grinding time and grinding speed. The finishing efficiency depends on the finishing media and decreases for lower finishing time. For all media a lower disk velocity results a smaller grinding effect, but there are clearly differences between the finishing media. The paper also discusses effects of the grinding process on the mechanical properties of the parts. Especially small part geometries and parts build in z-direction tend to break during the finishing process.