Comparative study of different surface treatments applied to Ti6Al4V parts produced by Selective Laser Melting

ABSTRACT

SLM (Selective Laser Melting) is an AM (Additive Manufacturing) technology able to manufacture components with high structural integrity; however, a key drawback is the resulting poor surface quality of these parts. In order to reduce the roughness of these surfaces different treatments could be applied, but all of them have limitations when applied to SLM parts. One of the main challenges for surface treatments is to provide quality surfaces regardless of its starting state or geometry. Currently, chemical polishing is the best positioned treatment to achieve this but it usually employs hazardous electrolytes. Therefore, more comparative data about the performance of alternative treatments to polish parts with different geometrical characteristics are required by industry. In this study, electropolishing, blasting and laser have been applied, either separately or combined, to complex SLM Ti6Al4 V parts. The most promising technologies have been also applied to parts with different planes and internal cavities.

KEYWORDS:

• Selective Laser Melting
• electropolishing
• blasting
• E-blasting
• laser polishing
• surface roughness
• build orientation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish Government (project SURF-ERA, EXP - 00137314 / CER-20191003) and also by the Departamento de Desarrollo Económico, Sostenibilidad y Medio Ambiente del Gobierno Vasco (project FRONTIERS 5 (2019–2020), EXP KK-2019/00077).