Effects of milling parameters on roughness and burr formation in 3D- printed PLA components

This study investigated the 3D-printed PLA (Polylactic Acid) workability during the operation of milling. It is difficult to obtain as a result of a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printing a very strict tolerance, and a good roughness surface. A possible solution can be the usage of the last milling operation that can complete the workpiece in terms of desired roughness and dimension tolerances. A design of experiments (DOE) analysis has been applied to observe the optimizing result. Three factors have been analyzed: feed rate, depth of cut, and rotational speed. Two responses were investigated: roughness (Ra) and burr height. The results show that these two parameters present optimum results in two different values of the process parameters: the Ra is better at a higher feed rate and low depth cut, but the situation reverses for the burr height, for which lower heights are obtained when using higher feed rate and depth cut.