LAUSR

Abstract Additive Manufacturing processes lead to microstructural anisotropy of the parts, mainly as a consequence of the build-up orientation and sample height, since each layer experiences different thermal histories from the bottom to the top of the part. Such induced anisotropy generally remains after the heat treatment and may influence the performances of the cutting processes that are usually performed to finish the part functional surfaces. In this paper, the surface integrity of machined laser powder bed fused Ti6Al4V parts is analyzed in order to evaluate the effect of the build-up direction. To this aim, two different cutting processes, namely longitudinal and face turning, and cooling conditions, namely flood and cryogenic, were applied to parts obtained with different parameters of the additive manufacturing process. A wide surface and subsurface characterization was conducted, based on metallurgical, mechanical and topographical analyses. The results show that the additive manufacturing-induced anisotropy has a great influence on the machined surface integrity.