Depth-Resolved Characterization of Centrifugal Disk Finishing of Additively Manufactured Inconel 718

TL;DR

This study uses advanced characterization techniques to analyze how centrifugal disk finishing affects the surface microstructure and residual strain distribution in additively manufactured Inconel 718, revealing texture removal and strain induction near the surface.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed depth-resolved analysis of microstructural changes induced by CDF on AM Inconel 718, combining surface finish, texture, and strain measurements.

Findings

CDF removes surface crystallographic textures but not bulk textures.

Significant residual microscale strain is induced within 100 μm of the surface.

Surface finish quality depends on media size distribution.

Abstract

Surface characteristics are a major contributor to the in-service performance, particularly fatigue life, of additively manufactured (AM) components. Centrifugal disk finishing (CDF) is one of many rigid media, abrasive machining processes employed to smooth the surfaces and edges of AM components. Within the general family of abrasive machining processes currently applied to AM, CDF is moderate in terms of material removal rate and the inertial forces exerted. How CDF alters the underlying microstructure of the processed surface is currently unknown. Here we employ white light profilometry and high-energy X-ray diffraction to characterize surface finish, crystallographic texture, and anisotropic distributions of residual microscale strain as a function of depth in CDF-finished Inconel 718 manufactured with laser powder bed fusion. Surfaces are finished using both unimodal and bimodal finishing media size distributions. We find that CDF will remove surface crystallographic textures (here a {111} fiber texture) from AM components, but generally not alter the bulk texture (here a cube texture). CDF is also found to impart significant amounts of residual microscale strain into the first 100 $\mu$m from the sample surface as evidenced by an approximately 50% increase in diffraction peak widths at 20 $\mu$m from the surface in comparison to 120 $\mu$m.