MADM Approach for Selection of Materials in Fused Deposition Modelling Process

When designing a new product, the manufacturer can efficiently predict the performance of the product by prototyping and using a real situation. Before freezing the final requirement of the design, prototype is built to understand the actual requirements of the product by the end users. Different prototyping techniques are available each with distinct strengths. Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is one of the most widely used techniques. Different materials are used in FDM. The problem of material selection in FDM is a concern for manufacturers for many years. This problem becomes more complicated in recent years, due to the increase in variety of materials and the properties they offer. In this paper, an objective-based multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) method is explored for the selection of material for FDM. The method follows fuzzy logic to transfigure the qualitative attributes into quantitative attributes. The scheme has been used to rank different materials to assist the manufacturer to select suitable material from long list of materials available for FDM. NYLON 12 has been identified as the suitable material based on the attributes considered. However, the final ranking may differ based on the attributes and alternatives considered.