Internal Surface Roughness Measurement of Metal AM Channels via X-ray Computed Tomography: A Case Study

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is able to create engineering components with internal features that are unmeasurable using conventional tactile and optical methods; new methods for measuring internal inaccessible features in a non-destructive manner are required. In this work a metal additively manufactured (AM) component with an internal channel is fabricated and scanned via X-ray computed tomography (XCT) before and after undergoing internal surface polishing by means of abrasive flow machining (AFM). The internal surface roughness of the AM channel is characterised in 3D to better understand and control the AFM process. The results show that XCT is able to reveal the complex internal surface texture of metal AM components and to quantify the changes caused by the AFM process.