Laser polishing of additive laser manufacturing surfaces: methodology for parameter setting determination

This paper focuses on the improvement of thin and complex surfaces obtained with a direct metal deposition (DMD) process through the use of the laser polishing process on the same five-axis machine. This study aims at giving a methodology to determine laser polishing operating parameters and thus master the final topography improvement. On the basis of experiments and a polynomial regression method, the classification and methodology of some operating parameters models are obtained. The proposed methodology is efficient within the feasibility domain and several qualitative objective functions and interactions between the operating parameters are taken into consideration. The proposed operating parameters models, have a 77-100% correlation with experimental data. In parallel, this study shows an impact of the parts topology on operating parameter settings. On the basis of the operating parameter ranking, the proposed methodology allows the determination of behaviour models regarding new parameters setting and without additional experiments. [Submitted 26 February 2018; Accepted 05 September 2018]