Surface roughness improvement of cast components in vacuum moulding by intermediate barrel finishing of fused deposition modelling patterns

In this work, investigations have been made for surface roughness (Ra) improvement of vacuum moulding (VM) components by introducing barrel finishing (BF) on fused deposition modelling patterns at preliminary stage (i.e. before being used as master patterns). The Ra improvement will help to avoid/reduce post machining/finishing operations for green manufacturing. The VM master patterns were prepared using P-430 grade acrylonitrile butadiene styrene material on commercial fused deposition modelling setup. Further, Ra of VM master pattern prepared was improved by using BF process (as intermediate process). The controllable parameters of BF and VM process (namely, media weight, cycle time, vacuum pressure and grain size of refractory sand) were studied at three levels by using Taguchi L9 orthogonal array to explore their affects on Ra of the final cast components. The results of study suggest that media weight of BF and sand grain size of VM process contribute significantly for improving Ra.