A novel additive texturing of stainless steel 316L through binder jetting additive manufacturing

Abstract

The current study introduces the novel additive micro-texturing through the binder jetting additive manufacturing technique to fabricate circular micro-textured stainless steel 316L parts. The topographical analysis shows that the sample is manufactured with periodic feature sizes less than 250 μm and within an error limit of 7.62% with high metallographic purity. The wettability study indicates hydrophilic wetting behavior with contact angles in the ranges of 85.7°–82.5° for deionized water and 50.2°–36.7° for Hank’s balanced salt solution. The surface free energy for the textured part (53.484 mN/m) is improved by 72% compared to the untextured part (31.054 mN/m), leading to enhanced hydrophilicity. Further, in the scratch analysis, the textured sample shows better features intactness.