Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344

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Additive Manufacturing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/addma

Full length article

Integration of FDM surface quality modeling with process design

Alberto Boschetto, Luana Bottini ∗ , Francesco Veniali
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Fused Deposition Modeling is one of the earliest types of Additive Manufacturing technologies. In this
Received 14 December 2015 process a physical object is fabricated directly from a Computer-Aided Design model using layer-by-
Received in revised form 15 March 2016 layer extrusion of a feedstock plastic filament material through a nozzle. It was originally developed for
Accepted 8 May 2016
design and functional prototype applications but, in the last decade, gained considerable recognition and
Available online 4 June 2016
adoption in industry due to the process simplicity, affordability, and ability to make parts in a range
of common engineering thermoplastics. Thus Fused Deposition Modeling products must comply with
Keywords:
tolerance and roughness requirements in order to satisfy a mechanical coupling or functionality. This
Additive manufacturing
Fused deposition modeling
work strives to develop an integrated methodology able to help the process design with the aim to goal
Roughness prediction the requirements. This method allows knowing in advance the surface quality of the Fused Deposition
Accuracy prediction Modeling product at chosen process parameters. This way an ex ante product check is possible. Moreover
the methodology can find the set of solutions when the requirements are prescribed on the product
features: it is possible to define the technology capability and analyze the proposed fabrication conditions.
This methodology is highly useful in process management also in conjunction with other operations and
can help the computer aided process planning since it can predict admissible scenarios.
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a host of technologies in which
the part is fabricated layer by layer with addition of material as
opposed to traditional removal and deformation processes. Since
the first introduction in late 1980s, the AM processes gained con-
siderable recognition and adoption in industry because they do not
need traditional tooling or computer numerical control program-
ming. The prototypes can be fabricated rapidly as compared with
the time needed by machining or molding. Among the AM technolo-
gies Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is one of the most accepted
processes. It fabricates parts by creating layers through a deposition
of a bead of semi-molten material: a feedstock plastic filament is fed
into a heating head, extruded through a nozzle and deposited onto
a plate or onto a completed layer. Both model and support materi-
als are processed for parts with overhanging zones with respect to
the stratification direction [1].
The diffusion of this technology is due to the process simplic-
ity, affordability, and ability to make parts in a range of common
engineering thermoplastics such as Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: alberto.boschetto@uniroma1.it (A. Boschetto),
luana.bottini@uniroma1.it (L. Bottini), francesco.veniali@uniroma1.it (F. Veniali).
(ABS). Initially FDM were employed to build physical prototype for
design and verification of new products. In the last two decades it
moves from prototyping aim to end-product fabrication in a wide
range of applications in low volume or customized products becom-
ing one of the most widely used AM process in industry. A number of
applications regard the automotive, the aerospace, the biomedical
engineering, the tooling and casting foundry [2–4].
Notwithstanding the great diffusion, the FDM presents limi-
tations in accuracy and surface finishing of the fabricated parts.
A typical drawback lies in the staircase effect which markedly
affects this technology as in the employed thick filament: at present
0.127 mm is the smallest layer thickness (0.254 mm is the most dif-
fuse) higher than other AM processes. Several problems are related
to thermo-mechanical aspects: since the polymeric material is
rapidly cooled, part distortions and residual stresses are introduced.
The strinkage is quite unpredictable thus the process compensation
by adjusting parameters is needed but the section and the position
of the deposited filament are affected by local conditions due to
the specific part geometry. Nevertheless the most limiting prob-
lem is the lack in industry of an accurate prediction of the surface
output both in term of roughness and accuracy. In literature some
attempts have been done in order to solve this problem. Pandey
et al. [5] has been developed a semi-empirical model able to predict
the surface roughness. This model depends upon the layer thick-
ness and the build orientation and shows a good agreement with

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2016.05.008
2214-8604/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344
Nomenclature
r radius of the theoretical FDM profile peak
f spacing of the theoretical FDM profile
L layer thickness
b̂ stratification direction
n̂ surface normal
n̂i normal of the generic i-th triangle
␣ deposition angle
˛i deposition angle of the generic i-th triangle
Ra average roughness
h dimensional deviation from the nominal value
 rotated x coordinate
 rotated y coordinate
 rotated z coordinate
ϕx rotation angle around the axis x
ϕy rotation angle around the axis y
(i)
Pk vertex of the i-th triangle for k = 1, 2, 3
experiments and literature in the range 10◦ –45◦ of build orienta-
tion. In [6] a theoretical model considering the surface angle and the
layer thickness has been proposed in order to predict the average
roughness. The surface angle has been calculated over each facet
obtained by reading the STL model file. A model able to predict the
geometrical profile of FDM fabrication has been developed in [7].
A full factorial plan demonstrated the capability to predict several
parameters in a wide range of the deposition angle and for two layer
thicknesses. An extension of this model has been provided in [8]
introducing the measuring direction as a variable and allowing the
prediction of the spacing and the hybrid roughness parameters. The
model reliability falls in the range of the deposition angle between
25◦ and 155◦ and for measurement direction with measuring angle
smaller than 80◦ . In order to overcome this limitation a refinement
has been introduced in [9]: by using neural network approach a
new model depending upon the layer thickness and the deposi-
tion angle has been found; it is effective all over the range of the
deposition angle. In the same work experiments have been carried
out to demonstrate that the use of different materials, machines,
filling and support strategies does not affect the agreement of the
proposed formulation with the experimental data. This ultimate
model provides a prediction within few percent prediction errors
and it is ready for industrial process implementation.
As regards the dimensional accuracy many studies have been
conducted in order to investigate the FDM process parameters
which influence the deviation from the nominal value. Some
authors focused their attention on benchmarking studies: they
consist in the design and the experimentation of test parts char-
acterized by specific geometrical features in order to compare
different AM technologies. With regards to the FDM process some
benchmarking studies [10–14] found deviations from the nomi-
nal value ranging between 0.1 mm and 0.7 mm in disagreement
with the Stratasys Ltd (the company developer of the technology)
which assures a part accuracy in x-y-z direction following the rule
±0.127 mm or ±0.0015 mm per mm whichever is greater. In [15] a
methodology for improving the accuracy of the distance between
parallel faces concerning FDM manufactured prisms have been pro-
posed. For this purpose, a model predicting the dimensions of the
fabricated parts have been found by Neural Network approach com-
bined with an optimization algorithm. Positive deviations of FDM
parts are observed by Sood et al. [16]; adopting the Grey Taguchi’s
method they obtained the optimum level of the process parame-
ters to simultaneously minimize the percentage change in length,
width and thickness. Other experimentations based on Taguchi
335
method [17,18] and fuzzy modeling [19] highlighted how the accu-
racy can be predicted by considering the extruding parameters and
the part orientation. For industrial prototyping systems the extrud-
ing parameters are rarely modified and depend upon the material,
while the part orientation modifies the deposition angles of the part
surfaces. This factor is considered in the work of [20] which pro-
vided a semi-empirical model of the filament profile able to predict
the FDM dimensional deviation. This formulation demonstrates
that the deviations are only marginal affected by the material and
by the prototyping system and depend upon the layer thickness and
the deposition angle: the choice of these factors is critical during
the FDM process design to obtain a specific part quality. A comple-
tion of this model has been proposed in [21] in order to implement
this formulation in the STL processing.
The need to predict in advance how the obtainable quality varies
according to the process parameters change is important to estab-
lish if the technology permits to comply with the requirements and
which parameters levels allow to obtain the desired surface quality.
Since the FDM fabricates geometries without complexity limita-
tion, the part orientation at a specific layer thickness is a hard task
for a single purpose (roughness or dimensional deviation require-
ments) and becomes much more difficult for multiple specifications
over the part surfaces. The aim of this work is to provide a complete
description of the attainable surface part quality when specific pro-
cess parameters have been set and to develop a methodology able to
identify the domain of possible solutions: this domain is the basis in
which operates further choices without losing the complying with
the requirements.
2. Methodology and tool development
The proposed methodology is described by the flow diagram
reported in Fig. 1. Firstly the virtual model is handled and pro-
cessed in order to organize data related to facets information. Then
a crossroads allows opting for a direct or indirect method. In the
former the process parameters can be chosen and the correspond-
ing prediction of the quality results are provided in form of 3D
mapping superimposed to virtual model: a manual check of the
requirements can help to decide about the process planning in
case of positive or negative results. In the latter method the surface
requirements, by means of tolerances and minimum roughness for
the selected surfaces, are provided in input and a subsequent anal-
ysis allows to generate the domain of process parameters solution
to this specific problem. If the domain is empty the process plan
should be revised, else it is possible to choose a couple of process
parameters levels within the not-empty domain and display the
resulting 3D representations of this possible solution by following
the direct method.
2.1. Roughness and dimensional deviation models
As indicated in the Introduction this methodology employs two
models with the aim to predict the surface quality obtainable by a
particular FDM parameters set. These formulations originate from
a deposited filament model described in [7]. According to this
approach the profile of a FDM part surface is composed by a series
of circular arcs, r in radius and spaced by f, as shown in Fig. 2: L is
the layer thickness, the versor b̂ is the stratification direction, the
versor n̂ is the normal to the surface and ␣ is the deposition angle,
i.e. the angle between the versors b̂ and n̂. Thus the profile can be
defined as [7]:

f (x) = r2 − x 2 (1)
336 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344

Fig. 1. Flow diagram of the methodology.

The drawback of this model is that it does not well work for
deposition angles less than 30◦ and greater than 150◦ . In order to
overcome this problem, an extension of it has been developed using
Neural Network approach [9]. This new formulation provides a full
effective prediction all over the deposition angles:

Ra = −6118 + 1766Tanh (15.67 + 0.016˛ − 0.049L)

− 200.4Tanh (11.54 − 0.08˛ − 0.045L)

− 24.87Tanh (17.13 − 0.044˛ − 0.042L)

−1131Tanh (10.33 + 0.019˛ − 0.034L)

Fig. 2. Deposited filament scheme. +5501Tanh (20.84 − 0.056˛ − 0.02L)

−195.5Tanh (4.559 + 0.062˛ − 0.018L)

In order to evaluate the symbolic integral of the average rough-
ness, the Taylor series expansion of the Eq.1 limited to the second +101.3Tanh (20.09 − 0.088˛ − 0.018L)
order term has been considered: +116.1Tanh (21.66 − 0.105˛ − 0.013L) (6)
x2
f (x) ∼
=r− (2)
2r
Since this model allows predicting with a great precision (less
The profile has been compensated by the mean line as following: than 4% mean absolute percentage error for ABS and less than 9%
 f⁄2 f2
for other materials) the obtainable average roughness for a chosen
1 − 24r + f·r layer thickness L and a deposition angle ˛, it is employed in the
c= f(x)dx = (3)
f −f⁄2 f methodology developed in this paper.
As regards the dimensional deviation, the model developed in
The compensated height of the profile is: [20,21] takes into account the shape of the surface profile which
deviates from nominal one when the deposition angle is differ-
f2 − 12x2
fc = f (x) − c = (4) ent from 90◦ : the empirical determination of f and r expressions
24r allowed to gain two separate formulations for each investigated
Using the values of f and r found by theoretical and experimental layer:
formulations and integrating the absolute values of the compen-
sated height of the profile, it is possible to obtain the prediction of ∼ 2
h(˛)| = 0.19 Cos (˛) (7)
Ra as function of L and ␣ [7,8]: L = 0.254
 f ⁄2
1 f2 Lcsc˛ ∼ 2
Ra = |fc |dx = √ = √ (5) h(˛)| = 0.36 Cos (˛) (8)
f −f ⁄2 18 3r 9 3 L = 0.331
 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344 337

Fig. 3. Schematization of 3D rotation applied to solid model.

These equations are not in a convenient form for the implemen- Fig. 4. Solid model of the object employed to evaluate the methodology processing
tation of the methodology so they are joined in a unique expression time.
as a function of both L and ˛:
h(˛, L) = 2.21(L − 0.168) Cos2 (˛) (9) By using Eq. (6) the average roughness value of each triangle can
be calculated. An association between this value and an adequate
The presentation of the results gained through Eq. (6) and (9) indexed color palette has been built. A direct mapping has been
can be visualized via color shading applied on the 3D model: this applied to 3D model by coloring each triangle with the correspon-
way all roughness and deviation values can be displayed by rotat- dent palette element. The same procedure has been employed to
ing and zooming the geometry in two distinct representations and develop the dimensional accuracy representation using Eq. (9) and
the areas of interest can be accessed allowing the verification of considering that this formulation is affected by an error of 0.05 mm,
the requirements. A processing of the STL model in a specific con- i.e. the experimental error of the model calculated as the standard
figuration is needed. As said, the parameters are the layer thickness deviation of the residuals. These quantitative results allow verifying
and the deposition angle. The former can be chosen in a dedicated whether specific zones of the component comply with the design
window while the latter needs a STL model orientation which is requirements. The process planner can manually search for a com-
typically employed in the CAM environment. In this methodology bination of part orientation and layer thickness which meets the
the part orientation with respect to the stratification direction is part specifications.
allowed according to the following procedure. The STL model is As described in the flow diagram, the indirect method allows
loaded by means of vertices data and facets interconnections and defining the requirements of some specified surfaces. This is typi-
aligned to the reference system of the machine: the plane x-y is cal because a part does not need the same restrictive tolerances and
coincident with the fabrication table and the z axis is the stratifi- surface roughness all over its surfaces. The proposed methodology
cation direction b̂, as shown in Fig. 3. The rotated STL model can be permits the selection of one or more zones and the definition of tol-
obtained by a rigid-body homogeneous transformation as follows: erance and surface roughness requirements for each of them. Then
⎡ ⎤
⎡ ⎤ Cos[ϕy ] 0 0 0 ⎡ ⎤ the STL model in the original orientation is analyzedby means of the

⎢ ⎥ x deposition angles and for a chosen layer thickness and the dimen-
⎢⎥ ⎢0 Cos [ϕx ] 0 0 ⎥ ⎢y ⎥ sional deviation and the average roughness values are calculated
⎢ ⎥=⎢ ⎥ · ⎢ ⎥ (10)
⎣ ⎦ ⎢0 ⎥
Cos [ϕx ] Cos[ϕy ] 0 ⎦ ⎣ z ⎦
for each triangle. A routine checks if all the triangles complies with
⎣ 0
the requirements. Then the model is rotated and the verification
1 1
0 0 0 1 is repeated. The rotations cover the range {−90◦ ,90◦ } for both the
angles ϕx and ϕy in two phases in order to reduce the computational
where ϕx and ϕy are the rotation angles along the axes x and y
time: the former is characterized by a coarse discretization of the
respectively.
solid angle and the set of solutions are collected; the latter checks
This operation affects the STL facets orientation. The normal of
(i) (i) (i) the angles in a fine discretization around the previous found solu-
the i-th triangle defined by the vertices P1 , P2 , P3 can be calculated
tions. The object of Fig. 4 is characterized by 249805 vertices and
considering the cross product between the two vectors of the plane
87234 triangles. An average roughness under 40 ␮m is required on
containing the triangle itself, e.g. two triangle sides, as reported in
the red surface and a tolerance of 0.1 mm is assigned to the conical
Eq. (11):
surface colored in blue.
(i) (i) (i) (i) The code has been implemented in Mathematica 10.2 consider-
→P P ×→P P
n̂i =
1 2 3 2

(11) ing a step of 4.5◦ which is fine enough for the FDM part orientation

→ P (i) P (i) × → P (i) P (i)

1 2 3 2 purpose. The computation has been run on a laptop computer with

Since the deposition angle ˛i is defined as the angle between
the normal n̂i and the stratification direction b̂, the scalar product
between these two versors is the cosine of ˛i thus it can be obtained
as following:
˛i = arccos(n̂i · b̂)
a Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6500U CPU @ 2.50 GHz and required 2 s, 5 s
and 2 s for the tolerance, the roughness and the final refinement
routines respectively. The total time of 9 s shows the methodology
is easily employable in a commercial personal computer. A code
improvement will further improve this computational time. This
(12) way the method allows knowing if it is possible to satisfy the prod-
338 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344

uct requirements and, if some solutions exist, it provides a set of

possible part orientations for a chosen layer thickness. The attain-
able surface quality can be displayed by applying the direct method
of the methodology.

3. Case study

In this section the methodology described in the Section 2 is

applied to a functional prototype: this component is character-
ized by design specifications such as the average roughness and the
shape tolerance in specific zones in order to permit its functionality.
For this case study the application of the methodology, the choice of
a part orientation that permits to comply with the design require-
ments, the experimental validation of a chosen configuration are
provided.

3.1. Application of the methodology Fig. 5. Door handle and its requirements.

The considered case study is a door handle: its virtual model and
design specifications are reported in Fig. 5. The joint pin (in blue)
is a functional element because it allows the rotation of the door
handle; thus this cylindrical element (nominal diameter 12 mm)
has been characterized by a circularity tolerance of 0.2 mm. The
surface colored in red, for aesthetic and ergonomic purposes, must
have a surface roughness better than other elements: in this specific
case the requirement is an average roughness Ra lower than 30 ␮m.
The component has been processed according to the methodol-
ogy. In order to facilitate the application of the method a tool with
an operative interface has been developed in Wolfram Mathemat-
ica 10.2. This interface is composed by three parts: the first one
gives information about the loaded STL file (number of vertices,
number of triangles, model volume, file dimension) and shows the
rendered and the facetted STL models; the second one is an oper-
ative panel that permits selecting the layer thickness and the part
orientation by the choice of the angles ϕx and ϕy ; the third part
shows, through two 3D chromatic maps, the surface quality in term
of obtainable average roughness and dimensional accuracy. This
latter part is important for the methodology because it permits to
check in real time as the obtainable surface quality changes when
the process parameters are modified. As concern the dimensional
accuracy, since the chromatic map permits to extend the control
on the entire surface, the method can be employed to evaluate the
shape deviation of the fabricated part from the nominal one.
In Fig. 6 a sketch of the tool interface for the door handle in its
original positioning is showed.
In this positioning and for 0.254 mm layer thickness, the door
handle shows the best obtainable surface quality for vertical sur-
faces: thus the joint pin, the coaxial cylindrical surface and the
lateral sides of the component will be fabricated with an average
roughness of about 16 ␮m and a dimensional accuracy of 0.05 mm.
Although this configuration allows the joint pin component to com-
ply with the shape tolerance, the upper curved surface shows a
marked disagreement with the roughness requirement. Thus other

Fig. 6. Operational and output panel for the door handle in the original orientation (ϕx = 0◦ , ϕy = 0◦ ).
 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344 339

Fig. 7. Operational and output panel for the door handle in the ϕx = 90◦ , ϕy = 0◦ orientation.

Fig. 8. Set of part orientations that satisfies surface roughness specifications (red arrows), shape tolerance(green arrows) and both the requirements (black arrows) for
0.254 mm (a) and 0.331 mm (b) layer thickness. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

part orientations must be investigated in order to comply with all
the specifications. If the door handle is positioned so that the curved
surface is vertical (ϕx = 90◦ , ϕy = 0◦ ), the roughness requirement
would be satisfied but the joint pin would be fabricated horizontally
with several zones exceeding the admissible maximum deviation
(Fig. 7).
Since this problem has contrasting issues, a configuration allow-
ing the conformity of both the requirements must be searched. This
aim could be obtained by a number of attempts suggested by the
representation output but it is not a simple task. Otherwise the
indirect method could be employed to display all the possible sat-
isfying configurations. According to this methodology, the surfaces
interested by the specifications have been selected and provided
to the processing system together with the roughness and toler-
ance limits. The outputs of this elaboration are the graphs reported
in Fig. 8. The results are described by a set of arrows representing
the part orientations related to each specification: the solutions for
the surface roughness and the shape tolerance requirements are
reported in red and in green respectively. A first result is the sys-
tem capability to satisfy the required specifications. For example,
Fig. 8a is related to a layer thickness of 0.254 mm: as shown, the
2 sets of solutions have an intersection, represented by the black
arrows, demonstrating that the system can fabricate a part satis-
fying the requirements. Conversely, for 0.331 mm layer thickness
(Fig. 8b), the intersection between the red and the green arrows
does not exist: thus this layer thickness cannot be employed in this
case. From this representation is well evident that the solutions are
not simple to manually deduce. In fact while the positioning of a
cylindrical surface is expected to give results within a cone, for the
curved surface the solutions are not symmetrical.
The methodology provides a set of solutions by means of the
rotation angles couple ϕx and ϕy , as reported in Table 1. The time
needed to process this geometry has been 11 s on the same CPU
mentioned in the section Methodology. At this stage, it is possible
to choose a solution in the provided set and simulate the obtainable
surface part quality.
Even if the considered surfaces are apparently easy to manage
with a single rotation, the methodology found solutions with rota-
340 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344

Table 1
Set of solutions, for 0.254 mm layer thickness, by means of rotation angles ϕx and ϕy , complying with the door handle specifications.

␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y ␸x ␸y

−45.5 −9.5 −41.5 −7.5 −43.5 3.5 −43.5 6.5 40.5 −9.5 44.5 −7.5 42.5 3.5 40.5 12.5
−45.5 −7.5 −41.5 −5.5 −41.5 −4.5 −43.5 8.5 40.5 −7.5 44.5 −5.5 44.5 −4.5 42.5 4.5
−45.5 −5.5 −45.5 −4.5 −41.5 −2.5 −43.5 10.5 40.5 −5.5 40.5 −4.5 44.5 −2.5 42.5 6.5
−43.5 −13.5 −45.5 −2.5 −41.5 −0.5 −43.5 12.5 42.5 −13.5 40.5 −2.5 44.5 −0.5 42.5 8.5
−43.5 −11.5 −45.5 −0.5 −41.5 1.5 −41.5 4.5 42.5 −11.5 40.5 −0.5 44.5 1.5 42.5 10.5
−43.5 −9.5 −45.5 1.5 −41.5 3.5 −41.5 6.5 42.5 −9.5 40.5 1.5 44.5 3.5 42.5 12.5
−43.5 −7.5 −45.5 3.5 −45.5 4.5 −41.5 8.5 42.5 −7.5 40.5 3.5 46.5 −0.5 44.5 4.5
−43.5 −5.5 −43.5 −4.5 −45.5 6.5 −41.5 10.5 42.5 −5.5 42.5 −4.5 40.5 4.5 44.5 6.5
−41.5 −13.5 −43.5 −2.5 −45.5 8.5 −41.5 12.5 44.5 −13.5 42.5 −2.5 40.5 6.5 44.5 8.5
−41.5 −11.5 −43.5 −0.5 −45.5 10.5 40.5 −13.5 44.5 −11.5 42.5 −0.5 40.5 8.5 44.5 10.5
−41.5 −9.5 −43.5 1.5 −43.5 4.5 40.5 −11.5 44.5 −9.5 42.5 1.5 40.5 10.5 44.5 12.5

Fig. 9. Operational and output panel for the door handle for the ␸x = 45.5◦ and ϕy = −9.5◦ . orientation.

tions around both the axes: this underlines the usefulness of finding
the parameters’ set all over the solid angle. For example let’s take
the solution ␸x = −45.5◦ and ϕy = −9.5◦ . The Fig. 9 shows the sim-
ulation for this part orientation. As expected, the surface roughness
is less than 30 ␮m upon the curved surface, and the dimensional
deviation of the joint pin diameter is less than 0.1 mm.
3.2. Experimental validation
In order to validate the methodology results, the component
has been fabricated in the abovementioned three configurations:
the original positioning ␸x = 0◦ , ␸y = 0◦ the configuration related
to ␸x = 90◦ , ␸y = 0◦ , and the orientation defined by ␸x = −45.5◦ ,
␸y − 9.5◦ . The employed machine is a Stratasys Dimension bst 768
and ABS has been used. The virtual model has been loaded within
the machine CAM environment, i.e. the Catalyst Ex, and oriented
according to the chosen configurations.
The fabricated components have been measured in order to
compare the simulated configurations and to evaluate the satis-
faction of the surface quality requirements as predicted by the
methodology.
The joint pin, which is characterized by a circularity tolerance,
has been measured using the digital image analysis. This shape
requirement means that the circular cross section of this element
must lay between two concentric circles. This way the cylinder sec-
tion has been acquired by a Canon Canoscan Lide 90 flatbed scanner
with a not interpolated resolution of 1200 dpi. The image process-
ing consisted of 4 steps: the binarization, the image polishing, the
edge detection and the data analysis. In order to separate the object
from the background, a selection has been performed by thresh-
olding brightness values according to the Otsu’s cluster variance
maximization method [22]. This way the obtained binary image has
been polished from the noises coming from the source variation and
the image debris. In this case the scanned image is affected by the
interference between the camera scan and flickering of the fluores-
cent tube in a way different from the typical Gaussian noise [23].
In order to preserve the feature intensity values a spatial operator
has been employed to directly clean the defects: a morphological
closing deleted all the objects smaller than the structuring element,
set at a dimension of 0.02 mm. The border of the cylinder has been
obtained by the Canny detection algorithm, based on the first order
directional Gaussian derivatives [24]. Finally the point cloud has
been referred to the least square circle in order to define the out-
 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344 341

Fig. 10. Digital image analysis outputs (red line) aligned with the nominal section (dashed black line) for the configurations ␸x = 0◦ , ␸y = 0◦ (a), ␸x = 90◦ , ␸y = 0◦ (b),
␸x = −45.5◦ , ␸y = −9.5◦ (c).

of-roundness as the radial peak to valley distance from this circle;
then the convex hull method has been employed. This method cal-
culates the smallest convex set that contains the acquired points
in the Euclidean plane [25] and it is useful when considering geo-
metrical aspects and determining whether a shaft and a bore can be
assembled together [26]. The calibration through a set of Johansson
gauges of this measurement chain led to an uncertainty of 21 ␮m.
The roughness measurements upon the upper surface of the
door handle has been performed by a Taylor-Hobson Form Taly-
surf Plus profilometer with a declared height accuracy of 16 nm.
The measurement length is 12.5 mm; the data have been filtered by
a corrected Gaussian filter [27] characterized by a cutoff of 2.5 mm
according to [28]. The measures, spaced by 10 mm, have been taken
over the entire surface and having care to match the STL position
when reported in the graphical representation.
3.2.1. Results
The results of shape deviations measured on the join pin are now
discussed. In Fig. 10 the output of the digital image analysis (in red)
has been aligned with the nominal section (in black) in order to
evaluate how the fabricated shape deviates from original one. It
is well evident that the configuration ␸x = 0◦ , ␸y = 0◦ (Fig. 10a) is
characterized by a very good accordance with the desired shape:
all the magnified zones are close to the nominal profile with a very
little deviation. This is expected because the considered section
is entirely contained in the same layer, i.e. the cylindrical shape
342 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344

Fig. 11. Box and whiskers plot of the measured contact points radial distance of the joint pin and out-of-roundness values for the three considered configurations.

Fig. 12. Predicted (continuous line) and measured (dots) average roughness values for the three considered configurations.

is fabricated vertically. Conversely, in the configuration related to
␸x = 90◦ , ␸y = 0◦ (Fig. 10b), the cylinder axis is perpendicular to
the stratification direction, i.e. it is fabricated horizontally. This way
the section is characterized by the most marked staircase effect and
by wide deviations nearby the top and bottom zones: the oscilla-
tions related to the deposited filaments are well evident. The lateral
zone shows a less pronounced variation, as it is fabricated vertically.
The third configuration, characterized by ␸x = −45.5◦ , ␸y = −9.5◦
(Fig. 10c), points out a behavior similar to the first case with a little
deviation also at the top and the bottom zones.
By applying the convex hull it is possible to select the probable
point of contact of this section. These points have been analyzed
by means of a statistical approach and graphed by the box and
whiskers plots reported in Fig. 11 for a comparative purpose.
The first configuration is in full accordance with the prediction
model developed in [20] because the distribution is centered on
the nominal value and falls within ± 0.1 mm; the out-of-roundness
is 0.13 mm complying with the tolerance requirement. As regards
the second configuration, the surface is characterized by a number
of deposition angles and thus it is affected by a larger distribution:
this corresponds to an out-of-roundness of 0.27 mm which exceeds
the tolerance limits. In the configuration found by the proposed
methodology, the surface inclination is nearby 90◦ with respect to
the stratification direction: thus in this case the tolerance limit is
satisfied.
As regards the roughness measurements the predicted values of
the average roughness have been displayed together the measured
ones and reported in Fig. 12. For the sake of clarity the upper sur-
face has been superimposed to the reported graph to identify the
position of each measure. The first configuration (in black) is char-
acterized by the best positioning of the surface leading to a constant
average roughness of about 16 ␮m. The experimental data shows
a slight positive deviation with respect to this prediction and it
is plentifully within the requirement. The configuration colored in
blue is related to the surface positioned horizontally and thus char-
acterized by several deposition angles: as expected the predicted
trend oscillates between 20 ␮m and 55 ␮m and the experimental
values confirm this behavior; this case is not acceptable for the
required surface finish. The configuration proposed by the method-
ology orients the surface in a particular 3D rotation making the
predicted trend to vary between 19 ␮m and 27 ␮m. Also in this
case the measured data confirms the modeled values and points
out that the part complies with the surface specification.
In order to visually compare the measured and predicted rough-
ness values, the 3D colored maps of the measured surfaces have
been constructed and reported in Fig. 13 together the predicted
ones. It is evident a very marked correspondence between the
predicted and fabricated surface morphology for each considered
configuration: only very slight deviations are observed confirm-
ing the good capability of the employed method to predict the
obtainable surface finishing.
 A. Boschetto et al. / Additive Manufacturing 12 (2016) 334–344
Fig. 13. Comparison between the predicted and the measured average roughness maps for the three considered configurations.
4. Conclusions
In this paper a methodology able to integrate the prediction
models of the surface quality obtainable by the FDM technology
and the process design have been developed. The used formula-
tions permit to foresee the dimensional accuracy and the average
roughness as a function of two FDM process parameters: the
layer thickness and the deposition angle. These formulations have
been integrated in a designed for the purpose tool, equipped by
a simple operator interface, which allows the modification of the
abovementioned parameters and the visualization of the surface
quality changes by colored mapping of the 3D model. Moreover
the methodology permits to select specific zones, characterized by
tolerance and/or roughness requirements, and provides, if exists,
a set of solutions represented by the layer thickness and a cou-
ple of rotation angles that define the part orientation. In order
to check one or more solutions the suggested process parame-
ters can be simulated through the generation of the 3D colored
representations. A case study has been proposed to validate the
method. The considered component is a door handle characterized
by both shape tolerance and roughness requirements in two dif-
ferent zones. The method application supplied a set of solutions
for the layer thickness of 0.254 mm, while claimed no solutions
for the layer 0.331 mm. One of the found solutions and two rea-
sonable orientations, not belonging to the solutions’ set, have been
experimentally verified. The measurements performed by the digi-
tal image analysis, for the shape tolerances, and by the profilometric
acquisitions, for the average roughness, highlighted that the found
solution permits to satisfy the design requirements while the other
configurations do not, claiming the reliability of the simulation.
This methodology fulfills the industrial need of the FDM implemen-
tation within the process planning since it simulates in advance
an entire set of possibilities for particular product geometry and
requirements and allows to determine the capability to fabricate
good parts.
343
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