Title of Seminar: Laser Polishing.

Name: Sayagaonkar Akshay Ravindra.

Roll no: 2016MTEMEPR016

Guide Name: Prof. Agnel DSouza.

ABSTRACT

Laser is the concentrated beam of light which is strictly coherent, monochromatic and collimated
which can be focused to small spots. Lasers are widely used in manufacturing as cutting, drilling,
welding, bending, cleaning, polishing, marking and heat treatments. [1] From many of above
applications we will focus on new approach of polishing operations carried out using Laser
Technology.

Surface of any material at microscopic level appears to have peaks and valleys. Conventional
polishing is the process of creating a smooth and shiny surface by rubbing it or by using
chemical action, during which the peaks are chopped off. For mechanical perspective it is a
finishing process for smoothing a workpieces surface using abrasives. Polishing is often used to
enhance the appearance of an item, prevent contamination, remove oxidation, create a reflective
surface, or prevent corrosion in pipes.

In comparison with conventional processing laser polishing opens up the possibility of selective
processing of small areas (<0.1 mm2). The surface roughness can be split into discrete
wavelength intervals and can be evaluated and optimized. Also the quality of manual polishing
strongly depends on the workers skills and experience. As manual polishing is a very
demanding but monotone work skilled workers are scarce resource. Again due to low processing
speed and sequential workflow, production of mould and dies with manual polishing is time
consuming and cost intensive, so laser polishing technique is adopted.

Laser polishing is a process by which surface roughness of machined part can be reduced
avoiding ablation phenomenon rather laser polishing is a phenomenon of reallocation of metal,
no material is added or subtracted during laser polishing (fig1). It is neither additive nor
subtractive process. In Laser polishing, a thin surface of metal is melted using concentrated
laser beam and surface tension leads to material flow from peaks to valleys. No material is
removed but gets reallocated while it is in molten state. The laser beam is moved over the surface
with a defined scanning velocity, so the new material is molten on one side of the melt pool and
resolidifies on the other side. Due to surface tension of molten material the surface roughness is
smoothened during the remelting process. The resulting surface solidifies without cracks, pores
or hidden defects out of the molten material.[2]

Now a days laser polishing is a widely used for polishing 3D complex workpieces, aerospace
components, historical monuments in museums and polishing of tools and mould making.[3]

Fig. Schematic of laser polishing by remelting a thin surface of layer [2]

Keywords: laser polishing, selective laser polishing, reallocation, surface roughness.

References:

1)Andrew j. Pinkerton, Laser in additive manufacturing, Optics and Laser Technology,September2015

2)A. Temmler, E. Willenborg, K. Wissenbach, Laser Polishing, proceedings of SPIE- The International
Society for Optical Engineering, February 2012.

3)L. Giorleo, E. Ceretti, C. Giardini, Ti surface laser polishing, Intelligent Computation in

Manufacturing Engineering, 2015.

4)S. Marimuthu, A. Triantaphyllou, M. Antar, Laser polishing of selective laser melted components,
International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture, May 2015

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