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Laser Polishing of 3D Printed Metallic Components

S. M. Bashaa, M. R. Sankara1
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh – 517506, India.

Abstract

3D Printing is an emerging technology to fabricate complex components in less lead time compared to traditional manufacturing processes. 3D
printing enables to build metallic functional components directly from CAD model by depositing the material layer by layer. The fabricated
components generally have very rough surfaces and demands for post processing, so that it can directly employ for its end use. Owing to
drawbacks like time consuming, skilled labour requirement and limited scope of automation, conventional finishing processes find less
application for finishing freeform components. Laser Polishing is a highly productive, contactless and fully automatic post processing technique
which is giving promising results to lower the surface roughness of 3D printed metallic components from the past two decades. In laser polishing,
when the components are irradiated by the laser radiation, peaks of the surface are melted to a very thin layer and redistributed into the valleys by
surface tension and gravity. Laser polishing has shown its ability to polishing varieties of materials from reflective materials like aluminium to
high strength materials like Inconel and Titanium alloys. In this present article, a review of laser interaction on surface integrity and mechanical
properties of different materials used in metallic 3D printing are reported. The optimum process parameters of laser polishing like laser power,
beam diameter, scanning speed and scan spacing/step over are also mentioned with respect to each material.

Keywords: Metallic Additive Manufacturing; Selective Laser Melting; Surface roughness; Laser re-melting; Post
Processing; Finishing

1. Introduction

The first Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing technologies are used to produce the components for
conceptual visualization or prototypes in the mid-1990s [1]. Due to continuous improvement in research, 3D
printing technologies switched from “rapid prototyping” to “rapid manufacturing” [2]. This enables to fabricate
direct end-use parts in a single-step operation. 3D printing technologies can produce functional components directly
from the CAD model. In these techniques, components are fabricated layer by layer melting and/or deposition of
material. Out of all the metallic 3D printing techniques, Selective Laser Melting (SLM) has enticed researchers
attention as it is giving promising result to produce freeform geometries with outstading mechanical properties like
ductility and strength [3]. Next to SLM, Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) or Laser Engineering Net Shaping (LENS)
is gaining importance due to its flexibility over SLM. Unlike SLM, in LMD the material is deposited layer upon
layer to fabricate the component. Irrespective of material being used, metallic 3D printed components always have
grainy rough surface because of layer by layer deposition, building methods that adopted, and size of powder
particles used for fabrication [4]. Since, 3D printed metallic components are fabricated by melting and spontaneous
cooling of the material, phase transformations are possible with respect to the elements present in the material,
cooling rate and building atmosphere [5]. This type of chemical transformations definitely affect the surface
integrity (a combination of surface morphology along with surface metallurgy) of the part being build [6].
Conventional finishing/polishing processes like hand polishing, sandblasting, ultrasonic polishing, electrochemical
polishing, chemical polishing etc., are employed by many researchers [7–9]. These conventional processes pose
problems like difficult to finish some materials, time-consuming, less geometrical flexibility, low process efficiency,
environmental pollution and less flexibility for employing automation to the process [10].

11
Corresponding author. Tel.: +0-877-2503410.
E-mail address: evmrs@iittp.ac.in
 Lasers, on the other hand, finding its applications in many sectors of engineering and polishing is not an
exception. Laser polishing is free from all the drawbacks posed by conventional techniques. Flexibility, contact-free,
eco-friendly and complete automation of laser polishing drew the attention of researchers to employ it for metallic
3D printed components. Powder based 3D printing techniques like Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), SLM, LMD,
LENS etc., can produce components with 98 – 99% density [11]. But still, there are some applications even where
this 98% dense component cannot be used due to its low fatigue strength and prone to fractures. In order to conceive
100% fully dense components, researchers [12] used a strategy to re-melt each layer of material fused/deposited
again before the next layer of material being spread/deposited. This increases the production time obviously, but it is
the only solution to get components with 100% density [13]. However, this laser re-melting also be applied directly
on top surface of the component to improve the surface quality/roughness and is called Laser Surface Re-melting
(LSR). LSR is also called Skin Scanning [14], Laser Surface Polishing and Laser Polishing.

2. Laser Polishing

Laser polishing works on the principle of surface re-melting and rapid solidification of a thin layer. From the last
two decades, laser polishing has shown continuous improvement in its capability to reduce the surface roughness of
a variety of materials like polymer, metals, ceramics. Unlike conventional finishing processes, laser polishing uses
thermal energy to smoothen the rough surfaces by melting a thin layer of material [15]. In laser polishing, a
precisely controlled laser beam is directed onto the surface to finish. The energy/intensity of the laser beam is
controlled such that it just melts the peaks of the surface and the resulted molten metal is distributed into the valleys
due to multidirectional surface tension and gravity [16]. As the melted material is distributed in valleys, theatrically
there is no material loss in laser polishing. Laser power, spot size and scanning speeds are the main controlling
parameters to attain a smooth surface [17]. The schematic of laser polishing process is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Schematic of Laser Polishing [18]

Depending upon the depth of re-melted layer, the laser polishing has two regimes, viz. Surface Shallow Melting
(SSM) and Surface Over Melting (SOM) [19]. In SSM regime, as mentioned above, the peaks get melted and filled
in the valleys to reduce surface roughness. If the intensity of the laser beam increased further, the depth of melted
layer increases. If the depth of this layer goes beyond the valleys, results in the onset of SOM. In SOM, low
frequency and high amplitude surface waves are possible due to large melt pool dynamics and results in higher
surface roughness compared to SSM [20]. There is an optimum value of laser beam intensity where a slight increase
in it responsible to an unfavourable regime like SOM. Investigations have shown that laser polishing generally
results in a combination of SSM and SOM but the final surface roughness depends on whichever regime is
dominant.

3. State of Art

The vast literature on Laser Polishing of metallic 3D printed components is divided according to the type of
material used for fabrication. Researchers used LaserForm TM ST-100, Steels, Aluminium alloys, Cobalt-Chromium
alloys, Inconel alloys, and Titanium alloys for investigation with laser radiation. Surface integrity, mechanical
properties and optimized process parameters of each of these materials are discussed in the following sessions.

3.1. Laser Polishing of LaserFormTM ST-100

 LaserFormTM ST-100 is a metallic material developed exclusively for additive manufacturing technologies like
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). The green part of this material is prepared by the SLS process which sinters the 2
wt.% of polymer binder coated 420 stainless steel powder. The green part is then placed in inter atmosphere furnace
to burn away the polymer binder and to proceed the 40 wt.% bronze infiltration. This material is mostly used for
preparing tool die in the injection moulding industry [21]. Surface roughness improvement of indirect SLS of ST-
100 was investigated by Ramos et al. [22]. The optimum average roughness achieved with laser polishing is about
2.4 µm from the as-received surface roughness of 9.1 µm when the Nd: YAG laser power is 220W and scanning
speed of 1.7 mm/s. The CO2 laser has given an average roughness of 0.8 µm from its initial value of 2.38 µm at
420W and 4.5 mm/s. In the case of the CO 2 laser, increasing the scanning speed reduces Ra value up to 1.2 mm/s
and then again starts to increase. An analytical model for determining average roughness was developed [23] and it
was fitting with experimental data with an error of 15%. A model was proposed by assuming the particles as a
sphere and the diameter equals the average diameter of powder. It has been reported that decreasing travelling or
scanning speed below the level of the SSM regime leads to the onset of SOM regime which results in higher Ra. In
their another study [20], the surface over melt (SOM) phenomenon of laser polishing of ST-100 was analysed. The
SOM regime of laser polishing is ascribed to lower scanning speed with higher beam intensity. A thermophysical
model was proposed to predict the average roughness in the SOM regime and the modelled roughness is a function
of solidification time.

The surface integrity of SLS fabricated ST-100 was investigated by Lamikiz et al. [24–26]. Experiments were
done to investigate laser interaction on a simple line, over an area and three-dimension line polishing. Simple line
polishing test results in the reduction of average roughness up to 80.1% from the initial value of 7.5 µm. From the
achieved optimum values of line polishing, the area polishing was performed by varying the overlap index from
15% – 30%. A reduction of 68.2% in initial surface roughness was achieved at 25% of overlapping. Three-
dimension line polishing reveals that there would not be any form deviations with laser polishing except the
reduction of surface peaks [24]. The micrographs of the cross section of the parts are shown in Fig. 2. From the
micrographs, in Area 1, it can be noticed that, even though bronze infiltration was performed still some porosity
observed which hampers the mechanical properties of the component. In Area 2, it was found that the hardness
increases compared to Area 1 and it consists of 100% AISI 314 stainless steel with no presence of bronze. The laser
scanned Area 3 is a combination of stainless steel and bronze and it was noticed that the percentage of bronze in
Area 3 is more than Area 2. This increase in bronze percentage was attributed to the extrusion of bronze from
stainless steel matrix so that the pure form of AISI 314SS was observed in Area 2. The increase in hardness of laser
scanning portion is due to the rapid cooling and in Area 2, 335 – 344 HV is the general hardness of AISI 314 SS
[26]. The optimum process parameters found by Lamikiz et al. [27] are laser power of 1200W, the focal length of 27
mm and scanning speed of 1400 mm/min.

Fig. 2. Cross-sectional views of simple line scan polishing [26]

3.2. Laser Polishing of Steels

Lamikiz et al. [24] examined the surface roughness achieved with hot work tempered tool steel (DIN 1.2344)
upon laser interaction and found that irrespective of initial surface topography the average of final surface roughness
achieved is nearly same. A reduction in average surface roughness up to 76.45% and 23.8% with simple line and
surface laser polishing was achieved respectively. In their another study [27], they analysed different topographic
surfaces of DIN C45 steel and DIN X40CrMoV51 tool steel after the laser sintering. The former one is polished
after performing milling and electro discharge machining (EDM) whereas the latter one was machined with ball end
milling operation. By maintaining constant focal distance and feed speed, the minimum surface roughness was
achieved with 1500W and 1700W for milled and EDMed surfaces respectively. In the case of DIN X40CrMoV51
tool steel, the minimum average roughness achieved was 0.356 µm at a laser power of 800W and focal point
distance of 22 mm. Investigation of surface morphology on X2CrNiMo 17-2-2 steel (1.4404) was done by Hofele et
al. [28] and found that lowering of average surface roughness from 12.5 µm to 0.35 µm at an area scan rate of 4
cm2/min with pulsed nanosecond fiber laser. Surface integrity of laser polished 300 grade Maraging steel was
examined by Solheid et al. [29]. Excessive spatter was observed for all the sets of laser power and scanning speed
when the pulsed frequency is 5kHz. When this pulse frequency increased further, melt pool instabilities was
observed when more than 12W laser power was employed. The roughness achieved with varying scanning speed
and pitch distance for the power of 25W and 50W is shown in Fig. 3. From the figure, it was found that the laser
power of 25W did not show any substantial improvement in the surface roughness whereas roughness of below 1
µm was observed with 50W laser at a scanning speed of more than 200 mm/s.

Fig. 3. Effect of scanning speed and pitch distance on roughness with laser power of (a) 25W; (b) 50W [29]

Yasa et al. [30–32] extensively worked on improving density, surface quality and microstructural investigation
on laser polishing of SLMed 316L Stainless Steel (316L SS). In order to completely eliminate the porosity in the
SLMed components, they used laser re-melting after each layer of the SLM process. This means after each layer
gets fused after melting, the same layer is rescanned before spreading the powder for the next layer. This might have
increased the production time, but it was the only solution to components where even 1% porosity would drastically
reduce the components life by crack formation and propagation. From the optical microscopy images, the porosity
of the SLM components with and without laser re-melting of each layer was measured to be 0.036 % (~ 100%
density) and 0.77 % respectively [30]. The average roughness on SLMed component without laser re-melting on the
outer surface is around 12 µm which upon re-melting reduces to 1.5 µm which is about 90% of improvement [31].
To increase the micromachining capability of SLM, it is combined with Selective Laser Erosion (SLE) which
selectively erode the material from SLMed component. The roughness reduction with SLE is not high as laser re-
melting but reduction up to 50% was achieved faster than laser re-melting. Due to the integration of SLE with SLM,
it can be possible to produce micro features in the ranges of 50 – 100 µm with SLM [31]. It has been found that due
to this strategy of re-melting of already solidified material, very refined grains were observed at each layer and due
to the density improvement to nearly 100%, the components can be employed where even 1% of porosity affects the
mechanical properties drastically [32]. Investigation of LMD surfaces reveals that the averages surface roughness in
the direction of deposition and perpendicular to the deposition are different [33]. At higher laser power and heat
input, it has been noticed that the roughness is higher in both deposited and perpendicular to deposited directions
after re-melting. This condition was not noticed when the laser power is 200W and scanning speed 500 mm/min.
 Rosa et al. [34] studied the laser polishing of thin and complex part of 316L SS fabricated by Additive Laser
Manufacturing (ALM) technique. Laser power, feed rate, overlap percentage and strategy of laser polishing are
investigated on the as-received component. From the feasibility study, it was noticed that scanning multiple times
has given even further reduction in surface roughness. At the optimised process parameters, laser polishing with 5
repeated scans reduced the initial surface roughness (Sa) of 21 µm to final roughness of about 1 µm which was a
reduction up to 96 % [34]. The effect of laser fluence/energy density and pulse overlap on SLMed 316L SS surface
was examined by Bhaduri et al. [35] by using Yb doped fiber nanosecond laser. The surface roughness (Sa) was
decreased from 3.8 µm to 0.2 µm at optimised process parameters like laser fluence of 9J/cm 2, overlapping in the
direction of scanning was at 95 % and 88 – 91% of step over/scan spacing. The oxide layer of approximately 0.5 µm
thick was observed when the polishing is done in presence normal atmospheric air. Formation of the oxide layer was
found minimal when polished under inert conditions of Ar gas compared to N 2 gas. To confirm the oxide layer
presence, an EDX area mapping, as well as line scan mapping, are performed at the junction of the polished and
unpolished region as shown in Fig. 4. EDX area mapping reveals that 26.3 wt% of oxygen was present on the
polished surface which is about 0.8 wt% in the unpolished or as-received surface. At high thermal energy input, the
increase in microhardness up to 60% was observed on the polished surface which also found by Kruth et al [36].

Fig. 4. (a) Micrograph of Junction formed between laser polish and unpolished area; (b) EDX area mapping [35]

3.3. Laser Polishing of Aluminium alloys

Laser polishing of aluminium and its alloys is a challenging task due to its high thermal conductivity and a high
reflectivity [37]. The lower absorption rate of laser radiation demands for the more intensified laser beam. In
addition to this, reactions of aluminium with oxygen produces robust oxide layer which deteriorates the surface
metallurgy [38]. In spite of these challenges, researchers investigated the capability of laser polishing on additively
manufactured aluminium alloys. Out of all aluminium alloys, AlSi10Mg finds most applications in additive
manufacturing. Hofele et al. [28] examined the surface of SLMed AlSi10Mg parts by employing laser cleaning
followed by laser polishing with both pulse as well as continuous laser. Pulsed disc laser with pulse durations in the
range of micro to nano range was used for laser cleaning. By maintaining the focussing position at 12 mm and
playing with parameters like laser power and beam intensity, the maximum roughness reduction up to 98% was
achieved at a beam intensity of 1.74 kW/mm 2 and area scan velocity of 50 mm/min. Using, continuous laser, the
scanning speeds from 200 mm/min to 350 mm/min at 1400W laser power has given a final roughness of 0.25 µm.
Area scan rate is an important parameter for industrial use of laser polishing and it was claimed that area scan rates
achieved with the pulse and continuous lasers were 25 mm2/min and 35 cm2/min respectively.

Additively manufactured AlSi10Mg parts have been investigated with laser polishing by using an oscillating
laser beam [39]. The as-received surface of SLM component has an initial average roughness of 8.7 µm. Keeping
the frequency of oscillating laser beam to scan the area at 10 Hz, laser power of 1700W and average pulse overlap of
80 %, the final roughness achieved was around 0.66 µm which is approximately 92% reduction from the initial
surface roughness. Metallurgical investigations of AlSi10Mg with laser interaction has been reported by Schanz et
al. [40]. A substantial improvement in the initial average roughness was observed when beam intensity is at 1.6
kW/mm2. From the initial average roughness of 8.43 µm, a minimum roughness of 0.298 µm and 0.262 µm was
achieved with continuous and pulsed laser respectively. It was seen that the chemical composition of polished
surface contains a lower amount of silicon content whereas the magnesium increases by a factor of four. The
unexpected appearance of oxygen forms bonds with surface elements and produce the oxide layer. As this oxide
layer has a high melting point, it floats on the top of the surface until it gets solidified. It was seen that the increase
in laser intensity increases the re-melted area and hardness of the polished surface with both continuous as well as
pulsed laser.

3.4. Laser Polishing of Cobalt - Chromium alloys

High corrosion resistance, excellent mechanical properties and high wear resistance of CoCr alloy make it
suitable for metallic biomaterials which are particularly suitable for orthopaedic and dental field [41]. The wear
resistance offered by CoCr alloys is higher than stainless steel and Ti alloys [42]. Due to its adaptability in
biomedical implants, it finds difficult to get finish by conventional finishing techniques because of freeform shapes
of different implants. Surface microstructure and corrosion resistance of additively manufactured CoCr alloy were
investigated by Wang et al.[43]. By varying the laser power from 28 – 70 W, at a scanning speed of 450 mm/s, the
minimum average roughness achieved was 0.45 µm. Formation of oxide layers on the surface was observed and
investigated by polarization studies. Pitting corrosion was noticed at lower powers of laser employed due to
insufficient energy to form a dense oxide layer. Irrespective of laser power used, γ and ε phases of unpolished
samples are subjected to drastic change upon laser polishing. Gora et al. [44] have analysed different scanning
strategies to smoothen the surface of CoCr alloy and found that a strategy imitating halftone printing angles was
given best roughness reductions. Yung et al. [45,46] extensively worked on the surface properties of simple to
complex surfaces (concave, convex and inclined) fabricated by SLM. In this work, they employed a novel technique
which continuously adjusts the defocusing distance to give a better surface finish on complex surfaces. With this
novel technique, at the optimum process parameters resulted in plain surface polishing, a reduction of surface
roughness of all the complex surfaces are decreased by an average of 93.5% from their initial values. Due to heat
affect zone and partially melted zones, the hardness of the top surface increase to Vickers hardness of 413HV from
the as-received surface harness of 380 HV and the high hardness was observed to be constant up to a depth of 150
µm. In their another study [46], the wettability of CoCr alloys was investigated. Found that the increase in object
distance and laser power adversely affects the surface quality and contact angle. It was observed that laser polished
surface with laser power of 40 to 80% results in hydrophilic surfaces whereas surface results with 100% laser power
are hydrophobic.

3.5. Laser Polishing of Inconel alloys

Inconel based alloys have excellent properties like high strength and hardness at elevated temperatures, fatigue
resistance, good weldability, wear, corrosion and oxidation resistance [47]. Owing to their properties, Inconel alloys
find applications in rocket motors, nuclear reactors, marine, aerospace and spacecraft industries [48]. Employing
conventional finishing techniques will not be an economical option as the harness ratio is less. The first investigation
of laser polishing on additively build Inconel alloy was done by Dadbakhsh et al. [49]. Inconel 718 samples were
fabricated by using LMD technique of additive manufacturing. Investigation of surface morphology was done by
varying the process parameters laser power, beam size, and scanning speed. It was observed that the spot size is not
a critical parameter to affects the surface roughness when compared with laser power and scanning speed.
Nevertheless, the spot size of 0.7 mm has given better results as compared to 0.3 mm and 1.0 mm. This was ascribed
to the track offset which is a function of beam spot size. This was also been mentioned [50] that too less and very
high track offset will result in higher roughness value.
Selective Laser Melted Inconel 625 was investigated and post processed with laser polishing by Witkin et al.
[51]. A 200W continuous fiber laser with 1064 nm wavelength was used for investigation with a beam diameter of
30 µm. Presence of oxide layer on the top of SLMed components or its traces hinders the polishing process and
leads to higher roughness. Printing the component in the inert atmosphere like Ar gas shielding results in a uniform
surface re-melted layer and thus leads to better surface finish. Arrizubieta et al. [52] came up with an innovative
thought of combining LMD, Laser Beam Machining (LBM) and Laser Polishing. The idea behind the integration of
these techniques lies in the power source i.e., laser. Just by changing the process parameters, the same laser can
perform all these operations at a single stage so that the production time enhances. Laser Beam Machining was used
to nullify the waviness of the components that generally results from LMD. By employing these techniques on
Inconel 718, it has been found that increasing scan velocity directly results in higher roughness. As the laser
frequency for laser polishing increases the surface roughness decreases but 200kHz is a kind of limit from which the
surface roughness starts to increase. A recast layer of thickness 22 µm was found on the polished surface when the
mean pulse power, scanning velocity, the pulse duration is 621W, 100mm/s and 460 ns respectively.

Surface integrity and mechanical properties of SLMed Inconel 718 are examined by Zhihao et al. [53]. Keeping
laser power constant at 90W and overlap rate at 10% of the laser spot, the scanning speed was varied to investigate
the surface morphology. At the optimum combination of parameters, the average roughness achieved after polishing
is about 0.1 µm from the initial value of 7.5 µm. Surface metallurgical tests result that the formation of large sized
dendritic/columnar grains in the SLMed substrate and very small grains are resulted from the laser polishing because
of rapid solidification. The micrographs of the cross-sectioned substrate and polished layer are shown in Fig. 5.
From the XRD analysis, the precipitation hardened phase γ" was found in the laser polished layer. The Vickers
hardness of re-melted layer was found to be increased by 27.5% from the substrate hardness of 345 HV. Wear rate
after laser polishing increases up to 90 % and this was ascribed to the increase in surface hardness as well as surface
finish. A reduction in coefficient of friction (COF) up to 0.15 was achieved with laser polishing and the graph
between COF and sliding time is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. COF verses sliding behaviour of unpolished and

Fig. 5. Micrographs of cross-sectioned substrate and polished layer [53]
polished surfaces [53]

3.6. Laser Polishing of Titanium alloys

The most extensively used material in the recent past for metallic 3D printing is Titanium super alloy i.e., Ti-6Al-
4V because of its excellent properties like high strength to weight ratio, high hardness, corrosion, oxidation and
abrasion resistance etc. Owing to its high strength to weight ratio, it finds applications in aerospace, marine
industries and because of its biodegradability it generally employs for biomedical implants [54,55]. Vaithilingam et
al. [14] investigated the surfaces of Ti-6Al-4V with and without scanning the surface of built cuboidal samples. The
development of oxide film on the surface of SLM parts has been noticed and found that the oxide film formed is
enriched with aluminium whereas the non-skin scanned surface is enriched with titanium. The concentration of
Vanadium was found more on skin scanned surface as compared to non-skin scanned surface. Scanning pattern
similar to halftone printing angle has given 85% reduction in initial roughness [44]. Marimuthu et al. [56] examined
the effect of laser polishing on SLM parts of Ti-6Al-4V by using a continuous fiber laser. The parts are produced
with build angle of 45 degrees and have an average roughness of 10.2 µm. The average roughness Ra achieved was
2.4 µm at a beam offset of 0.35 mm, laser power of 160W and scanning speed of 750 mm/min. At the optimum
process parameter of minimum surface roughness, the SEM micrographs revealed that there was no substantial
variation in the columnar grained microstructure of Ti-6Al-4V before and after employing laser polishing. A
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to investigate the melt pool dynamics and surface
topography. Higher input energies are requested to avoid as it results in an increase in weld pool velocity which
further results in striating patterns at the polished surfaces [56].

Titanium based superalloys TC4 (Ti-6Al-4V) and TC11 (Ti-6.5AL-3.5Mo-1.5Zr-0.3Si) parts are produced with
the LAM process and examined by Ma et al. [57]. The fabricated components are exposed to laser radiation to
investigate surface morphology, microhardness and wear resistance. The average surface roughness (Sa) before and
after polishing of TC4 and TC11 is decreased from 5.226 to 0.375 µm and 7.21 to 0.73 µm respectively. The
microstructure investigation of TC4 sample reveals the formation of acicular martensite α′ in the polishing zone with
a thickness of 170 µm. XRD analysis shows that the as-received TC4 components consist of both α and β while it
interacts with laser, the surface microstructure changes to α′ martensite phase without the β phase formation. The
reasons for the formation of uniform α′ phase is attributed to the immediate melting and subsequent cooling during
laser interaction [58,59]. When the as-received surface exposed to laser irradiation the temperature of the surface
increases and when it crosses the β transus temperature (~ 1273K), the α + β phase entirely transforms to β phase.
During the cooling process, depending upon the cooling rate the β phase can convert back to secondary α or
martensitic α′. Similar kind of formation of martensitic α′ phase also observed in TC11 but the polished zones are
only 90 µm. The critical cooling rate is about 410 K/s for TC4 and much higher for TC11. From the wear test
analysis, it was observed that, wear rates of TC4 and TC11 are largely enhanced with respect to as-received
material. This was attributed to the formation of hard martensitic α′ formation after laser polishing [57].

In the similar lines of work done by Ma et al. [57], Li et al. [60] also investigated surface topography,
microstructure evaluation and mechanical properties of Ti-6Al-4V components fabricated by the SLM process. The
best average roughness of 0.32 µm was achieved from SLMed surface with initial roughness of 6.53 µm at a
scanning speed of 150 mm/s, 90W of laser power and an overlapping ratio of 10%. A 3D fluid model and heat
transfer model were built to examine the melting and solidification behaviour of melt pool caused by laser polishing.
From the simulation results, the peak temperature generated is around 2800 °C and the melt pool depth was
observed to be of 60 µm thick. The transformation of α + β phases of the as-received surface to martensitic α′ phase
is exactly similar to the findings of Ma et al. [57], but the critical cooling rate was found to be 106 °C/s. The XRD
analysis, finite element simulation results and microstructures of the substrate, heat affected zone and melt pool are
shown in Fig. 7. Laser polishing increases the surface hardness about 25% from 340 HV (as-received) to 426 HV
(laser polished). From the wear test, the wear rate of the polished surface was found to be 39% lower than the as-
received SLM component. Continuous rapid melting and solidifying of melt pool results in the formation of residual
stresses in the range of 300 to 500 MPa. It has been observed that the change in tensile strength and yield strength of
as-received and laser polished components is less than 1% whereas the elongation was reduced by 5%. A
considerable reduction in the fatigue life cycles of laser polished components has been observed when compared to
the as-received component. This reduction in fatigue life was ascribed to the collective effect of SLM defects, with
micro-cracks, pores, along with the precipitation of brittle α′ martensitic [60].

Fig. 7. XRD analysis, finite element simulation results and microstructures: (a) XRD analysis results; (b) Temperature distribution of cross-
sectional view with the micrographs of; (c) polishing zone; (d) HAZ; and (e) as-received zone of material [60]
4. Conclusions

Laser polishing investigation on surface integrity of a variety of materials that are commonly employed for 3D
printing is discussed. Complete automation and its ability to finish freeform surfaces can enhance the production of
functional components by 3D printing like die/mould, aerospace components and biomedical implants. It has been
seen that laser polishing can produce surface roughness in sub-micron level which enhances the aesthetic appearance
and fatigue resistance. Being a thermal energy based finishing process, it has an effect on surface metallurgy along
with its morphology i.e., surface roughness. Laser power, spot size and scanning speeds are the most critical
parameters which govern the process regime. Laser polishing not only reduces surface roughness but also increases
surface properties. Employing laser polishing after each layer of in SLM process can improve the bulk density close
to 100%. Laser polishing only on the outer surface of component significantly increases the surface density up to
several micrometres depth and results in very fine and uniform microstructure formation. Because of the melting and
rapid re-solidification of the melt pool, the hardness of the surface increases. Laser polishing also observed to
improve surface wettability, wear resistance, tribological properties and reduce the coefficient of friction.

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