Abstract
Repairing, remanufacturing, and refurbishing high value metal components are crucial to move towards a more sustainable economy. Nowadays, repairing operations on high value parts, such as dies, are generally performed using time-consuming manual approaches that rely on the operator’s expertise. The research idea of this paper is to develop a retrofit kit to provide additive capabilities to an existing milling machine, allowing automatic repairing of components thanks to a fast switch between additive and machining operations without a relevant economic investment such the acquisition of a brand-new machine: the final cost of the solution is lower than 10% with respect to the mean cost of a 5-axis milling machine. The additive technology used in this work is Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) that is characterized by a higher deposition rate and a simpler and cost-effective equipment with respect to other techniques (e.g., laser cladding). The design of the system is illustrated in the paper together with the analysis of the results achieved repairing a test case: a die casting mold made of AISI H13 tool steel.
Highlights
IntroductionEU is very committed in pursuing a circular economy to improve industry and society sustainability, by means of regulations aiming at reducing the wasted materials volume and limit primary material use [3]
An analysis of the possible systems has been carried out, and it led to a design solution that is different from the one adopted by the currently market-available Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM)-based hybrid machine
All the other ancillary elements such as software and a structured approach to component repairing have been described. All such infrastructure has been installed on a DMU 75 MonoBlock 5 axis milling machine in order to be tested
Summary
EU is very committed in pursuing a circular economy to improve industry and society sustainability, by means of regulations aiming at reducing the wasted materials volume and limit primary material use [3] In this context, repairing, remanufacturing or refurbishing metal high added value components represents an effective action to move towards a circular economy [4,5]. This practice is already used in many applications such as to eliminate the service flaws from turbine blades or to repair the manufacturing errors or the worn features on molds and dies.
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