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Review
. 2023 Jun 26;16(13):4610.
doi: 10.3390/ma16134610.

Additive Manufacturing Post-Processing Treatments, a Review with Emphasis on Mechanical Characteristics

Alin Diniță  1 , Adrian Neacșa  1 , Alexandra Ileana Portoacă  1 , Maria Tănase  1 , Costin Nicolae Ilinca  1 , Ibrahim Naim Ramadan  1
Affiliations
Review

Additive Manufacturing Post-Processing Treatments, a Review with Emphasis on Mechanical Characteristics

Alin Diniță et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) comes in various types of technologies and comparing it with traditional fabrication methods provides the possibility of producing complex geometric parts directly from Computer-Aided Designs (CAD). Despite answering challenges such as poor workability and the need for tooling, the anisotropy of AM constructions is the most serious issue encountered by their application in industry. In order to enhance the microstructure and functional behavior of additively fabricated samples, post-processing treatments have gained extensive attention. The aim of this research is to provide critical, comprehensive, and objective methods, parameters and results' synthesis for post-processing treatments applied to AM builds obtained by 3D printing technologies. Different conditions for post-processing treatments adapted to AM processes were explored in this review, and demonstrated efficiency and quality enhancement of parts. Therefore, the collected results show that mechanical characteristics (stress state, bending stress, impact strength, hardness, fatigue) have undergone significant improvements for 3D composite polymers, copper-enhanced and aluminum-enhanced polymers, shape memory alloys, high-entropy alloys, and stainless steels. However, for obtaining a better mechanical performance, the research papers analyzed revealed the crucial role of related physical characteristics: crystallinity, viscosity, processability, dynamic stability, reactivity, heat deflection temperature, and microstructural structure.

Keywords: 3D printing; additive technology; heat treatment; high-entropy alloys; polymers.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Graphical abstract (Source: authors as the basis of article content).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Common words in scientific publications (Source: authors based on articles analyzed).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Word network in renewable energy transition scientific publications’ content (Source: authors based on articles analyzed).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Distribution of studied additive technologies.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Principal graphical scheme of L-PBF.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Principal graphical scheme of ME.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Principal graphical scheme of LENS.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Principal graphical scheme of DED.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Principal graphical scheme of DMLS.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Principal graphical scheme of MJB.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Principal graphical scheme of WAAM.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Heat treatments applied on 3D-printed specimens [28].
Figure 13
Figure 13
The influence of the type of heat treatment [28].
Figure 14
Figure 14
Lattice structures for 3D printing.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Specimens’ printing orientations.
Figure 16
Figure 16
Printed specimen of annealed PETG and CFPETG mechanical characteristics [38].
Figure 17
Figure 17
The influence of heat-treatment on tensile strength.
Figure 18
Figure 18
ABS flexural strength.
Figure 19
Figure 19
Mechanical properties for as-printed and annealed specimens made of PETG (a) and CFPETG (b).
Figure 20
Figure 20
Tensile properties of 3D-printed PPS samples.
Figure 21
Figure 21
Vickers hardness for different aging conditions.
Figure 22
Figure 22
Critical stress for as-fabricated, solution annealed and aged samples.
Figure 23
Figure 23
The distribution of improvement efficiency index in different reference papers [3,4,7,8,20,22,26,31,32,33,34,38,41,43,47,48,50,52,53,54,56,67,71,82,84,90,96,98,99,102].
Figure 24
Figure 24
Histogram of improvement efficiency index.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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