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Additive manufacturing has become more popular in today’s world of prototyping and manufacturing due to its advantages over traditional manufacturing processes. Among many additive manufacturing methods, Free Form Fabrication (FFF) is more popular on account of its ease of use, low maintenance and low cost. Polymers and polymer based composites and more widely used and accepted materials for FFF technologies. Since thermoplastics polymers are temperature sensitive, an attempt is made to understand the thermal behavior and its effect on the strength of FFF made parts. The strength of 3D printed part is mainly dependant on the bonding between the layers. However the bonding between the layers is dependent upon the thermal criteria i.e. heating and cooling cycles. Those cycles depend on the number of layers and the way in which the part is printed. In this work, Design of Experiments (DOE) approach is used by considering three process parameters i.e. extruder temperature, layer thickness and part orientation. Test specimens are manufactured and tested for their tensile strength. To obtain maximum strength, higher extrusion temperature, lower part orientation and higher layer thickness are found to be dominant factors. It has been found that the thermal behavior affect the mechanical properties of FFF parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]