Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) refers to a group of processes that manufacture parts of
arbitrarily complex geometry without tooling. Currently, the operation of most SFF machines
requires skilled operators with expertise in choosing process parameters in ordered to achieve the
desired part quality. Thus, the “push-button 3D hardcopy” promise of SFF has yet to be realized.
This paper presents a framework for selecting optimal process parameter values automatically
for the selective laser sintering (SLS) process. The research described considered five process
parameters that are important for the SLS process. To achieve quality measures from the five
process parameters, optimization is inevitable. The method optimizes these process parameters
of SLS with respect to a set of desired quality measures, based on user input of the relative
importance of each of the quality measures. The basis for the framework is the so-called Doptimality criterion applied to a series of factorial experiments that capture empirically the
relationships between the process parameters and part quality measures. The framework is
implemented in MINITAB™ and a macro is used to perform the optimization.Mechanical Engineerin