Effects of Centrifugal Disc Finishing for Surface Improvements in Additively Manufactured Gears

Date
2021
Authors
Fan, Foxian
Soares, Nicholas
Jalui, Sagar
Isaacson, Aaron
Savla, Aditya
Manogharan, Guha
Simpson, Tim
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Texas at Austin
Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is well suited to rapidly produce complex and customized geometries economically for low production runs. However, there is an inherent need for post-AM machining and surface finishing in most metal AM applications. Centrifugal Disc Finishing (CDF) is a media-based mass finishing process that can be employed to improve surface finish of external surfaces of AM parts with complex geometry. This original study aims to understand the influence of CDF processing conditions on Ti64 gear teeth fabricated via Powder Bed Fusion (PBF). A detailed statistical analysis is conducted to analyze the effectiveness of CDF to improve surface roughness of different build surfaces of the AM gear teeth. In addition, both contact profilometer and X-ray Computer Tomography (CT) techniques are applied to evaluate its effectiveness to measure CDF and AM surface finishing. Findings from this study on CDF of gear AM will benefit metal AM community by better understanding the impact of CDF processing conditions for surface improvements in mass finishing of metal AM parts.

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