Improving the surface quality and mechanical properties of additively manufactured AISI 316L stainless steel by different surface post-treatment

Additive Manufacturing (AM) provides new insights into producing metallic components. Despite all the advantages of AM, two main challenges to its use are the high surface roughness and tensile residual stress of the AM samples in the as-built (AB) state. Therefore, this research aims to study the effect of different post surface treatments such as grinding, drag finishing and surface mechanical treatment on the surface quality of the 316L stainless steel parts produced by the laser powder bed fusion technique. The surface integrity and mechanical properties of AB and surface treated samples were analyzed and compared. Compared to the AB state, the surface roughness of the post-treated samples decreased, and their microhardness improved. In the case of residual stress, it is found that SMT could transform the initial tensile residual stress into compressive ones.