Surface polish of PLA parts in FDM using dichloromethane vapour

Fused deposition modelling has become one of the most diffused rapid prototyping techniques, which is widely used to fabricate prototypes. However, further application of this technology is severely limited by poor surface roughness. Thus it is necessary to adopt some operations to improve surface quality. Chemical finishing is typically employed to finish parts in fused deposition modelling (FDM). The purpose of this paper is to decrease the surface roughness for polylactic acid (PLA) parts in FDM. The chemical reaction mechanism during the treating process is analysed. Then NaOH solution and dichloromethane vapour are used to treat FDM specimens respectively. A 3D laser microscope has been applied to assess the effects in terms of surface topography and roughness. The experimental results show that treatment using dichloromethane vapour performs much better than NaOH solution. Compared with the untreated group, surface roughness obtained through vapour treatment decreases by 88 per cent. This research has been conducted to provide a better method to treat PLA parts using chemical reagents.