LAUSR

Abstract The current research supports the use of commercial CNC milling machines that enables the development of new post-processing tools with a particular focus on the improvement of the surface finish of the fused deposition modelling (FDM) build part. The objective of the present research work is to develop a strategy capable to explore the option for finishing FDM build parts by conventional CNC milling machines. A major research issue in this work is to develop a finishing tool that would be compatible with commercial CNC milling machines. In this direction, a novel post-processing tool, namely thermally assisted finishing tool (TAFT) is designed and developed for thermally assisted finishing (TAF) of FDM build parts on CNC milling machines. As the surface profile of FDM parts shows different appearances in longitudinal and transversal directions, therefore, both directions were considered during TAF operation. Through surface roughness improvement and adaptability of the proposed technique, the effectiveness of the TAF tool was analyzed and studied. The analysis results showed that the selective melting played an important role in improving the surface finish conditions. The comparative data study shows the use of the TAF tool is more user adaptable, due to its easy compatibility with commercial CNC milling machines and provides future direction in the area of post-processing of FDM build parts.