Taguchi Design of Experiment for the Optimization of Electrochemical Polishing of Metal Additive Manufacturing Components

3D Printing (Additive Manufacturing, AM) offers benefits such as lower costs, easier customization and creating complex functional products. However, utilization of AM components in the engineering applications may be severely limited by the high surface roughness. For most industrial uses the high surface roughness can cause stress concentrations, premature failure, and corrosion susceptibility. Unfortunately, conventional surface reduction processes like machining, extrude honing, and sandblasting, may not be feasible for the complex AM components. This research focused on exploring electropolishing as a viable surface smoothing approach for the AM components. However, electropolishing is a multivariable process and requires extensive parameter optimization. We have employed Taguchi’s design of experiment to find the suitable combination of electropolishing parameters. Our Taguchi analysis yielded a set of optimum experimental parameters for the electropolishing of steel AM components. This experimental process reduced the roughness of AM component surfaces as much as ∼63%.