Study on the Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing Technology of Die Steel

Abstract

Wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) technology has received increasing attention. In this paper, the thin-walled parts with the height of 230mm and cylindrical parts with the diameter of 100mm were fabricated by WAAM using H13 wire and Metal-Inert Gas Welding (MIG) method. Process parameters of current I = 140A, arc voltage U = 25V, velocity v = 4mm/s were applied to manufacture the thin-walled and cylindrical parts. During the WAAM process of the cylindrical parts, when the overlap length of a circle equal to the length of the puddle, the forming appearance of the part is reasonably good. By cooling the former layers with water, continuous processing of the parts was successfully realized. No obvious differences were detected when testing the hardness and the microstructure of the parts built by these two processes. The application of cooling may be a key technology for the continuous WAAM processing of the cylindrical specimens.