Investigation and optimization of the weld zone and mechanical performance of thermoplastic parts which produced by additive manufacturing and welded by friction stir welding

In recent years, when global warming has begun to threaten human life, it is important to use welding methods that do not harm the environment, as in all materials and processes used in the industry. According to the researches, Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is also an environmentally friendly type of welding. At the same time, the welding strength is high since it affects the area affected by the weld the least during welding. In addition, due to its benefits, such as being cheaply, accessible and welding different materials with each other, researches on FSW have been increasing in recent years. Research has generally focused on welding metal materials with each other, welding composite materials and welding thermoplastic materials with each other. In the automotive sector, during the project stages, designed new part in the R&D units must be seen and tested on the vehicle before it goes into mass production. Producing a single part with traditional methods took too much time and caused very high costs that would not be mass-produced. Additive manufacturing (additive manufacturing) methods have been developed to produce such this prototype parts. İn the automotive industry thermoplastic materials are mostly used in the prototyping phase with additive manufacturing. In this study, the joining of parts produced by additive manufacturing from ABS M30 material with friction stir welding was investigated. Pioneer experimental studies were carried out to find the experimental parameters and the parameter range for welding was found. Then, the experimental design was made using the taguchi L9 orthogonal method array. when tool shoulder diameter was 16 mm, tool rotation speed was 800 rpm and feed rate was 10mm/min maximum stress obtained from welding of the samples produced by additive manufacturing with friction stir welding. End of the experiments, the mechanical values of the weld zone were measured and their behavior was examined via optical microscope.