AccScience Publishing / ESAM / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ESAM025340022
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Dimensional accuracy and surface roughness of thin-wall geometries in laser powder bed fusion of 316L stainless steel

Tianyu Zhang1 ,  Lang Yuan1*
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1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, United States of America
ESAM 2025, 1(3), 025340022 https://doi.org/10.36922/ESAM025340022
Received: 19 August 2025 | Revised: 27 August 2025 | Accepted: 28 August 2025 | Published online: 10 September 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Thin-wall geometries produced by laser powder bed fusion combine high manufacturing efficiency, design flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for specialized applications. In such features, surface quality directly impacts dimensional accuracy and functional performance. This study investigates the effects of laser power, scan path, build orientation, and nominal gap distance on the top- and vertical-surface roughness, surface features, and dimensional error (DE) of 316L stainless steel thin walls. Optical microscopy was employed to characterize melt pool morphology and surface characteristics. Increasing laser power enlarges melt pools, promotes lateral migration, and induces dross formation on vertical surfaces, raising roughness and DE. Incorporating a contour scan with an inward offset reduces the scanned area, limits melt pool migration, and improves dimensional accuracy. Print orientation has a negligible influence on DE under the tested conditions, while small gaps may close entirely at high power due to large melt pools and migration. Compared to cubes fabricated with identical parameters, thin walls exhibit rougher top surfaces at high power, attributed to reduced track overlap, limited wetting from previous layers, and powder redistribution near vertical edges, whereas vertical-surface behavior remains similar. These findings provide practical guidelines for optimizing dimensional accuracy and surface quality in thin walls through coordinated control of process parameters and geometry.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Additive manufacturing
Thin-wall structures
Surface roughness
Dimensional accuracy
Melt pool migration
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge the support from the National Science Foundation under grant number 2029425, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the National Institute of Standards and Technology under grant number 70NANB23H030, and the U.S. Department of Energy, Savannah River National Laboratory under contract no. 89303321CEM000080.
Conflict of interest
Lang Yuan is an Editorial Board Member of this journal but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, the other author declared that he/she has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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Engineering Science in Additive Manufacturing, Electronic ISSN: 3082-849X Published by AccScience Publishing
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