Materials, Methods & Technologies, Volume 18, 2024

Rezumat: Nowadays, additive manufacturing methods have started to become popular. The fact that it does not produce waste material such as machining methods and does not require molds as in classical plastic production methods makes these methods popular. In addition, the variety of materials used is increasing. Polylactic acid (PLA) material, produced from commonly used materials such as corn starch, is a plastic produced from organic materials and harmless to humans and the environment. In addition, the newly produced STH-coded material is produced on an organic basis and is harmless to the environment and humans. The advantages of STH material over PLA material are that it can work at higher temperatures and increase mechanical strength. In additive manufacturing methods, final product quality is generally controlled in terms of surface roughness. Because, in additive manufacturing, the molten material covers the surface in the form of a pattern, creating a surface with a certain roughness. For this reason, in this study, cube-shaped samples were produced by using PLA and STH materials, selecting three different variable production parameters (material type, filling shape, and extruder temperature), and determining a total of 18 test parameters at three different levels. After production, surface roughness values were measured from the upper surface. In line with these values, the Taguchi L18 experimental setup was applied and the best production parameters were examined in terms of surface quality. An equation that will predict the surface quality to be obtained with the selected parameters was derived through regression analysis. As a result of this study, the surface quality can be reduced below 1 micron surface roughness values in additive manufacturing and the surface quality is almost close to plastic injection molding.