Fabrication of FFF 3D-printed surfaces for PMMA-based biomedical device employing the pre-processing optimization to eliminate the post-processing steps

Abstract

The presented work focuses on fabricating highly smooth surfaces using the Fused Filament Fabrication Technique (FFF) without post-processing. We have fabricated six planar surfaces (samples) and extensively employed pre-processing on each. The aim is to eliminate chemical, mechanical, and other post-processing techniques, geometric conditioning, and health safety. After measuring the roughness profile in terms of Ra, Rz, Rmax, Rq, and Rv, we observed that the proposed design strategy successfully minimizes surface roughness by obliterating the irregularities like line, raster lines, and channelling effects. The FESEM data also support factorial analysis (ANOVA) and reveal reproducibility with minor variability making them suitable for subsequent soft-lithography and prototyping of other biomedical devices.