The 3D printed components face challenges in accuracy of its dimension and surface roughness due to the machine induced vibrations of the additive manufacturing systems. A polymer-based damping material offers a simple and cost-effective solution for this passive vibration of the additive manufacturing systems. In this work, a polymer-based materials such as rubber, PLA carbon fiber (PLA-CF) composite, and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) were fabricated via fused deposition modelling (FDM) process and their damping performance was assessed when positioned under FDM 3D printer machine. A cube specimen with a dimension of 5 × 5 × 5 cm3 was fabricated in FDM system and its dynamic performances such as displacement, frequency, acceleration, and velocity were recorded at 10% intervals throughout its printing process. The highest dynamic response has been attained by the PLA-CF damper due to its negligible viscoelastic energy and high stiffness property resulting maximum acceleration of 1.0 m/s2 and a displacement of 4.0 × 10−7 m at 100% printing completion. Whereas, rubber damper achieved intermediate damping behaviour with acceleration of 1.5 m/s2 due to its progressive viscoelastic deformation. In contrast, TPU produced a superior damping performance minimal displacement and acceleration throughout its printing process. Moreover, the cube printed under TPU damper produced smooth surface finish with surface roughness of (Ra = 1.63 μm, Rz = 20.4 μm). Overall, this work demonstrates that the TPU material shows exceptional damping performance as compared to other materials which were investigated and proves that a potential material for minimizing the vibration of FDM manufacturing system.
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