Chemical Polishing Based Surface Finishing of 3D Printed Steel Components

Reducing surface roughness is critical for improving the mechanical properties of metal 3D printed components. As produced laser sintered metal 3D printed components suffer from high surface roughness. This problem is enormously big for the 3D printed components with intricate geometries involving a large internal surface area. To address this issue, we performed chemical polishing of the 3D printed 316 steel components. After 30 minutes of chemical polishing the color of 3D printed steel components’ surface became dull grey to bright lustrous. According to optical profilometer study, the surface morphology improved dramatically. The Rq roughness parameter changed from ∼8 um to ∼0.6 um. We also applied chemical polishing on cubical metal 3D printed components with internal surfaces. This surface finishing method was equally effective for the internal and external surfaces.