Reducing Surface Roughness of 3D Printed Short-Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composites

Raluca Maier; Sebastian-Gabriel Bucaciuc; Andrei Cristian Mandoc

doi:10.3390/ma15207398

Reducing Surface Roughness of 3D Printed Short-Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composites

Materials (Basel). 2022 Oct 21;15(20):7398. doi: 10.3390/ma15207398.

Authors

Raluca Maier¹, Sebastian-Gabriel Bucaciuc¹, Andrei Cristian Mandoc¹

Affiliation

¹ Composite Materials Laboratory for Aeronautical Field, Romanian Research & Development Institute for Gas Turbines-COMOTI, 220D Iuliu Maniu Av., 061126 Bucharest, Romania.

Abstract

A 100 W fibre laser source was used to minimize the surface roughness of 3D-printed Onyx parts. Furthermore, this study aimed to determine the mechanism of surface finishing, the influence of the laser process parameters (laser power, pulse frequency, and laser scanning path) on the surface morphology, and the influence of the scanning path on the dimensional accuracy of the investigated Onyx 3D-printed specimens. A significant reduction in surface roughness of 91.15% was achieved on the S3 Onyx 3D-printed specimen following laser surface polishing treatment using a 50 W laser power and a frequency of 50 kHz. The laser scanning path had little influence on the surface roughness, but had a major impact on the geometrical deviation of the treated sample.

Keywords: 3D printing; laser polishing; post-processing; surface roughness.

Grants and funding

This research was funded within the project “Development of Research infrastructure for EMerging Advanced composite materials dedicated to innovative STator ogv technologies for aircrafts Engine noise Reduction”, codeMySMIS 132263, acronym REMASTER, contract no. 12/1.1.3H/28.04.2020.