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Alternating chempolishing and electropolishing for interior and exterior surface finishing of additively manufactured (AM) metal components

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Abstract

Additively manufactured (AM) components’ surface finishing is crucial in adopting them for intended applications in challenging environments involving fatigue, corrosion, high temperature, and nuclear radiation. In our prior research, chempolishing (C) was utilized as an electroless etching process that uniformly smoothens complex AM components’ accessible interior and exterior surfaces (Tyagi et al. Additive Manufacturing, 25:32–38, 22). A wide range of electropolishing (E) has been demonstrated for AM surface finishing. However, electropolishing can impact a surface that can be juxtaposed to counter electrode and can yield a very smooth surface to sub-micrometer level roughness. However, a knowledge gap exists about the impact of applying both approaches on the same surface one after another and what new advantages may arise because of combining two methods. This paper uses dual-stage liquid-based surface finishing strategies produced by alternating the chempolishing (C) and electropolishing (E) steps. Two dual-stage surface finishing approaches, i.e., chempolishing followed by electropolishing (CE) and electropolishing followed by chempolishing (EC), were performed on the 316 stainless AM steel component. Impacts of EC and CE approaches were compared with single-stage C and E surface finishing approaches. An optical microscope and mechanical profilometer were utilized to investigate the wide range of surface roughness parameters. CE and EC produced Ra ~ 1.4 µm and ~ 1.6 µm, respectively. Surface roughness on CE- and EC-treated AM samples was lower than those individually treated by C and E approaches. Scanning electron microscopy provided further insights into the microstructural difference between CE- and EC-treated AM samples. This paper reports a liquid contact angle study on CE- and EC-treated AM samples to provide insights into the relative difference in surface energy that is crucial for making coatings on AM parts. A spectroscopic reflectance study was also employed to register the difference in physical properties of AM components treated with CE and EC approaches. This study reveals industrially practicable interior and exterior surface finishing approaches for complex AM metal components that require minimum tooling and real-time process monitoring.

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Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the funding support by the National Science Foundation-CREST Award (contract # HRD- 1914751), Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Agency (DE-FOA-0003945). This work is supported by the Department of Energy’s Kansas City National Security Campus. The Department of Energy’s Kansas City National Security Campus is operated and managed by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC, under contract number DE-NA0002839. We also acknowledge the partial funding support from NASA MUREP Institutional Research Opportunity Grant under Cooperative Agreement #80NSSC19M0196.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Engineering, University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, 20008, USA

    Joshua Dillard, Andrew Grizzle, Wondwosen Demisse, Kate Klein & Pawan Tyagi

  2. National Security Campus, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC, Kansas, MO, 64147, USA

    Lucas Rice

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  1. Joshua Dillard
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  2. Andrew Grizzle
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  3. Wondwosen Demisse
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  4. Lucas Rice
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  5. Kate Klein
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  6. Pawan Tyagi
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Josh Dillard, Andrew Grizzle, and Wondwosen Demisse. Kate Klein and Lucas Rice contributed in sample design and data analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Pawan Tyagi and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Pawan Tyagi.

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Dillard, J., Grizzle, A., Demisse, W. et al. Alternating chempolishing and electropolishing for interior and exterior surface finishing of additively manufactured (AM) metal components. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 121, 8159–8170 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09857-y

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