Factors Affecting the Surface Roughness of the As-Built Additively Manufactured Metal Parts: A Review

Nowadays, additive manufacturing technologies continue to increase in number, and with them, the various challenges they bring for the optimal design of components. However, many relevant applications require that a certain surface finishing level is reached; in particular, surface roughness should stay below a certain threshold. The aim of this work is to provide, for each of the most used metal additive manufacturing technologies, a short review of parameters affecting as-built surface roughness, indicating possible correlations with process parameters. The identified correlations, summarized visually as tables, could serve as starting guidelines for the design and production of parts with controlled surface roughness or having a surface roughness suitable for the application of possible surface finishing post-processes.