Abstract
Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) has been investigated to deposit large-scale metal parts due to its high deposition efficiency and low material cost. However, in the process of automatically manufacturing the high-quality metal parts by WAAM, several problems about the heat build-up, the deposit-path optimization, and the stability of the process parameters need to be well addressed. To overcome these issues, a new WAAM method based on the double electrode micro plasma arc welding (DE-MPAW) was designed. The circuit principles of different metal-transfer models in the DE-MPAW deposition process were analyzed theoretically. The effects between the parameters, wire feed rate and torch stand-off distance, in the process of WAAM were investigated experimentally. In addition, a real-time DE-MPAW control system was developed to optimize and stabilize the deposition process by self-adaptively changing the wire feed rate and torch stand-off distance. Finally, a series of tests were performed to evaluate the control system’s performance. The results show that the capability against interferences in the process of WAAM has been enhanced by this self-adaptive adjustment system. Further, the deposition paths about the metal part’s layer heights in WAAM are simplified. Finally, the appearance of the WAAM-deposited metal layers is also improved with the use of the control system.
Highlights
Additive manufacturing (AM) has gotten wide publicity in the aerospace, medical, and architecture fields as it allows the unlimited design for complex parts and the automated build process at low costs [1]
To evaluate the self-adaptive double electrode micro plasma arc welding (DE-micro plasma arc welding (MPAW)) control system, a series of tests were performed to verify the availability of the material to be deposited during the deposition process where in the height of deposition varied
5 Conclusions In this study, we developed an innovative control system for AM via DE-MPAW and evaluated it using a series of deposition tests
Summary
Additive manufacturing (AM) has gotten wide publicity in the aerospace, medical, and architecture fields as it allows the unlimited design for complex parts and the automated build process at low costs [1]. As one type of technologies in AM, wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is popular with the fabrication of large metal components because of its potential for lowering material and equipment costs, improving the deposition rate, WAAM is mainly divided into three techniques by the type of welding processes that include gas metal arc welding (GMAW), gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), and plasma arc welding (PAW) [4]. The excessive heat input, the metal spatter, and the arc wandering are three unavoidable issues in GMAW-based WAAM deposition process, which adversely affects the size precision. (2021) 34:59 and quality of the -deposited parts [6] To address these issues, many ongoing researches focus on temperature control techniques. The temperature control techniques are not suitable to improve the heat accumulation in GMAW-based WAAM deposition process, especially for depositing complex and large-sized metal parts. The results showed that increasing the cooling time of inter-layers did not effectively improve the accumulation phenomenon of heat in depositing metal parts but decrease the parts-making efficiency in some degree
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