Investigating the Influence of Electroplating Layer Thickness on the Tensile Strength for Fused Deposition Processed ABS Thermoplastics

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is a kind of Rapid prototyping (RP) technique, which allows direct transformation of CAD files into physical models. This paper attempts to identify and study the influence of electroplating layer thickness on the mechanical strength of Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) samples developed from the FDM process. The study is conducted on the tensile test samples of ABS, built on Stratasys FDM vantage SE machine, and tested under IS specified test conditions. The electroplated samples were also subjected to acetic acid tests and surface roughness measurements to check for proper adhesion of plating. The electroplating thickness adopted was 60, 70 and 80 μm. The electroplated tensile samples indicated an increase in the tensile strength with the corresponding increase in the plating thickness. 60 μm sample exhibited lower ductility and 70, 80 μm samples exhibited enhanced ductility. Keywords-ABS, FDM, Electroplating, CAD, RP.