The Electropolishing of Additively Manufactured Parts in Titanium: State of the Art

Abstract

Recently, additive manufacturing technologies have begun to play a significant role in the industrial field due to the possibility to build complex, near‐net‐shape, and porous parts, optimizing costs, and time processing. Simultaneously, the high roughness of additively manufactured parts remains a critical drawback, limiting their use like an as‐built component. Therefore, postprocessing treatments are needed. The electropolishing (EP) treatment could be ideal for simple, complex, or porous parts characterized by low surface quality. Herein, it is aimed to provide the state of the EP treatment's art carried out, to date, on additively manufactured parts made of titanium and Ti6Al4V alloy. A scientific literature research on EP of additively manufactured titanium and Ti6Al4V alloy is conducted using the Scopus database. The evaluation of recent research, still very few to date, reveals that a significant reduction of the roughness can also be achieved in complex shape additively manufactured parts. Although the EP is a versatile technique to reduce the roughness of additively manufactured parts, further studies are needed to improve its effectiveness, especially for complex and porous structures, to reduce the environmental impact of the materials used.