Laser Surface Alloying of Sintered Stainless Steel

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

This paper reports a multiple surface treatment technology including APS and laser alloying to treat the surface of the sintered dual-phase stainless steel. However, from the whole manuscript, there are some drawbacks needed to be revised. In particular, the author only told the readers what they have done. However, why they did such tests, what are their finding especially what are their new finding in scientific viewpoint, the authors did not tell the readers.

Here are some suggestions to improve the quality of the manuscript:

   1. In the abstract section, only one or two sentences are enough to give the research background. The authors should focus on showing their new findings and interesting results, not only show what they have done.

   2. In the introduction section, the authors need to clarify the research purpose, that is why they did such researches, what the other have done in the related fields and what is the difference of the current research from other’s previous studies.

   3. In the experimental section, since the authors concentrated on the surface treatment technology, the aspects of sintering technology would not be the center of this section. Instead, the two steps surface treatment process should be described in detail.

   4. In the results and discussion section, it is suggested that the authors need to carefully chose the related results to illustrate their research purpose, not only show all the results they have obtained.

   5. In the material science fields, the relationship between the microstructure and the macro-properties is the main topic. When the authors organized the results, they should keep this in mind.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The current work studied laser surface alloying of sintered stainless steels as well as the influence on microstructure and surface geometric structure. Overall, from my own opinion, this manuscript looks more like a experimental report instead of scientific paper because of too many errors and no any comprehensive analysis on their results. So I recommend rejection of this paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper deals with an interesting subject of surface treating sintered stainless steel. It provides a compelling overview of experimental work, combining it with a theoretical background on the relevant matter. The paper's main aim is to demonstrate the application of laser technology and its effects on the surface layer of sintered stainless steel. The main contribution is in the findings of experimental work in regards to varying parameters of the treatment. However, there are some areas that need to be addressed before the paper is accepted for publication. 

Broad comments:

The paper uses mostly clear scientific language in its approach to the subject matter, which is good, but improvements are required in certain important aspects of the paper:

1. Although the abstract is a summary of the paper, it lacks motivational clarification, i.e. what is the significance of the method in terms of improvements of similar methods and why was there a need for upgrading.

2. The title is informative, but the authors should think about condensing it. 

3. The introduction segment of the paper requires editing. This is primarily in regard to the fact that there is no clear analysis of the shortcomings of the presented papers. The introduction does not offer a true state-of-the-art review of the topic as previous research is bulked in groups with no real interpretation of gaps in knowledge. The context of the present study is therefore not clear – the research question is not outlined by taking into account what is already known about the topic. Furthermore, there is no clear statement in terms of what is the purpose of the paper and what are its objectives. 

4. In the Methods section it is not clear on what basis were the parameters presented in Table 3 chosen. The background on varying and nonvarying parameters should be explained with a clear outline of how many samples in total were created and why. 

5. The Results and discussion section should offer more discussions from multiple angles, with a context regarding causality explanations between varying parameters and influence on the surface and properties. It is not known are there any sound statistical results to form general conclusions.  Additionally, is not completely clear what are practically meaningful results. 

6. The Conclusions section should mention the implications of this study and its limitations. Limitations could be a basis for future research.

 

Specific comments:

1. Multiple tables thought the paper seem to be misaligned.

2. Figure 16 is not clear - the vertical axis should read "Vickers Pyramid Number (HV)" and the numbers should be bigger. 

3. Although DOI numbers (Digital Object Identifier) are not mandatory for references, they are highly encouraged.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The quality of the manuscript has been improved in compared with the previous one. However, there are still some typos in the current version. For example, in line 66, ‘where’ should be ‘were’. Still in the introduction, “the authors” appears many times, if the ‘authors’ refers to the authors in the current manuscript, it is suggested to use ‘we’ replace them. Or if the authors indicate other researchers, it is better to show their real names.

  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

We are grateful for your remarks regarding our manuscript.

 

Authors' Responses to Reviewer's Comments:

 

The quality of the manuscript has been improved in compared with the previous one. However, there are still some typos in the current version. For example, in line 66, ‘where’ should be ‘were’. Still in the introduction, “the authors” appears many times, if the ‘authors’ refers to the authors in the current manuscript, it is suggested to use ‘we’ replace them. Or if the authors indicate other researchers, it is better to show their real names.

 

Answer:

The authors made corrections and changes.