The surfaces of laser-sintered and laser beam melted parts are characterized by typical surface effects and thus cause difficulties when using the popular tactile profilometry method and conventional twodimensional surface parameters for analysis. Therefore, this study shows the potential of a new measurement approach by a confocal microscope and three-dimensional surface parameters. Within this study, a special focus is laid on the classification of different surface orientations and on a special issue in laser sintering: orange peel severity.
A good correlation (ρ = −0.912) is found between three dimensional surface features and mechanical properties of laser-sintered parts. This study identifies correlating surface parameters and features out of the wide range of existing evaluation methods resulting from the new possibilities of a three dimensional surface measurement in contrast to a conventional tactile profilometry. Therefore, surface analyses were performed using a confocal microscope and tensile tests according to ISO 527-1 were conducted. Especially the motifs dale and volume of islands analyses show a good correlation concerning the tensile strength, the Young´s modulus and the elongation at break. The differences with regard to each feature and their influence on the mechanical properties are discussed.
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