Metal Additive Manufacturing enables the production of geometrically complex components; however, it often results in surface defects such as high roughness, porosity, and residual powder. These imperfections can significantly impair mechanical performance, fatigue resistance, corrosion behavior, and visual appearance. Each industrial sector has specific requirements—durability and strength in aerospace, friction reduction in medical applications, aesthetics in luxury, and enhanced thermal exchange in tooling—but all share a common need for improved surface quality. Traditional finishing techniques (e.g., blasting, vibratory finishing, chemical and electrochemical treatments) are effective but insufficient when used separetly. Their economic impact is substantial, accounting for 20–40% of the total production cost. This underscores the importance of systematically evaluating their performance across multiple criteria, including roughness, topology, geometry, and visual quality. No single process provide all requirements. Consequently, combined approaches (e.g., blasting followed by vibratory finishing, magnetic polishing with electropolishing, chemical and electrochemical treatments) and hybrid technologies (such as PEMEC and DLyte) are being developed. These solutions leverage the complementarity and synergy between mechanical and chemical processes to significantly reduce surface roughness, preserve geometric integrity, and optimize the cost–quality–lead time triad. Such advancements pave the way for more efficient and competitive finishing strategies in metal additive manufacturing.

Keywords: Hybridization; Post-processing; Dlyte