Experimental study on the groove surface texture processed by laser on the surface of high-speed steel

Groove surface texture was widely used in the frictional mechanical part, such as mechanical seal, cylinder liner and piston ring, whose performance depends on its geometric parameter of the texture. Therefore, it is important to process the surface texture efficiently with accurate geometric parameter. Groove surface textures were fabricated on high-speed steel by lasers with different output powers, repetition frequencies and scanning speeds. Comprehensive experiments with three levels and three factors were designed to study the relationships between texture topographies and the three processing parameters. The experimental results showed that the depth and width of the groove surface texture slightly increased firstly and then decreased with the rise of laser repetition frequency. Moreover, with the incensement of laser scanning speed, the depth of the groove surface texture increased firstly and then decreased, but the width of the groove surface texture continued to rise. Variance analysis showed that laser scanning speed and repetition frequency had more obvious influence on the width and depth of groove surface texture than the output power. High-quality groove surface texture would be processed on the high-speed steel by laser with the output power of 10W to 14W, the repetition frequency of 20kHz to 30kHz and the scanning speed of about 1000mm/s. Meanwhile, indentation testing indicated that the hardness on marginal area of surface texture markedly increased.