Investigation of Dimensional Accuracy/Mechanical Properties of Part Produced by Selective Laser Sintering

Selective laser sintering (SLS) process has the potential to become one of the most useful additive manufacturing techniques in coming few years, because it has potential to easily produced complex shapes. Use of this process becomes more extensive, with the main advantages being a wide range of build materials available. So SLS can accommodate multiple applications throughout the manufacture process. It comes early with three main applications: conceptual models, functional prototypes, and pattern masters. Since then they have been added with an extra module, which incorporates rapid tooling. Only disadvantage of SLS process that it is both time consuming and expensive when a new material comes into use. In this paper we will investigate the effect of part placement (X and Y direction) in the build on the dimensional accuracy and mechanical properties of part produced by this SLS process.