Abrasive Surface Finishing on SLM 316L Parts Fabricated with Recycled Powder

Abstract

Improving the surface roughness quality of 3D printed components, especially metallic ones, which are fabricated from the selective laser melting (SLM) method, has drawn enormous attention from the research community. It should be noted that various studies on this topic have reported that precise surface roughness results can be obtained with various techniques that are indeed not cost-effective. Differing itself from these studies, this manuscript investigates an economical solution for fabricating and surface treating SLM components. Specifically, the inspected specimens were printed with recycled 316L stainless steel powder and treated solely with two abrasive surface finishing methods. In the manuscript, two scanning strategies namely meander and stripes, and three types of surfaces were investigated. Subsequently, their 2D and 3D surface roughness results were elaborated. After the proposed herein abrasive treatment, 3D surface roughness arithmetical mean height of a surface (Sa) value of 0.9 µm can be achieved.

Keywords

• selective laser melting (SLM)
• surface roughness
• abrasive surface finishing
• stainless steel
• 316L
• recycled powder