Thin-walled metal deposition with GTAW welding-based additive manufacturing process

Abstract

The arc welding-based additive manufacturing technology is in its developing state. This technology can be utilized to produce free-form metallic structures for the aerospace and biomedical industry. The current article presents the design of semi-automatic gas tungsten arc welding-based additive manufacturing system for fabricating thin-walled metallic structures. This study aims to analyze the effect of process variables on the output parameters, such as deposition width and deposition height. The set of experiments were performed based on the design developed by Taguchi method. The experimental data have been analyzed to study the effect of the significant process parameters like current, torch speed, wire feeding speed and torch angle. The optimization of the significant process parameters has been done to ensure thin-walled deposition with minimum wall thickness and better geometric characteristics. Experimental results showed that as the angle of inclination increases the deposition width increases and the deposition height decreases. The surface appearance of the bead sample deposited at a different angle of inclination was investigated. The thickness of the wall obtained in this study was found to be the lowest wall thickness achieved by the arc welding-based additive manufacturing process deploying filler material of 1.2 mm diameter.