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The development of additive manufacturing has allowed for increased flexibility and complexity of designs over formative and subtractive manufacturing. However, a limiting factor of additive manufacturing is the as-built surface quality as well as the difficulty in maintaining an acceptable surface roughness in overhanging structures. In order to optimize surface roughness in these structures, samples covering a range of overhang angles and process parameters were built in a laser powder bed fusion system. Analysis of the surface roughness was then performed to determine a relationship between process parameters, angle of the overhanging surface, and surface roughness. It was found that the analysis of surface roughness metrics, such as Rpc, Rsm, and Rc, can indicate a shift between surfaces dominated by partially melted powder particles and surfaces dominated by material from the re-solidified melt track.
Fox et al. (Fri,) studied this question.