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The effect of WAAM process parameters on process conditions and production metrics in the fabrication of single-pass multi-layer wall artifacts

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Abstract

The present work seeks to understand the impact of varying dwell time and input deposition power on part quality and overall production time for wire arc additive manufacturing. In this work, multi-layer wall geometries were deposited under different input power conditions without affecting the material deposition rate by setting traverse speed and wire feed speed constant and varying the contact tip-to-workpiece distance and the deposition power settings. Current and voltage data and optical imaging of the deposition zone were captured in situ, and wall geometry was characterized using laser scanning, so to understand the applicability of these methods for determining part height in situ. The present results demonstrate that alternating dwell times with lower input deposition power can result in significantly reduced overall production time and minimal material underbuilding, despite increased deposition geometry width. Furthermore, it is shown that while elimination of process dwell results in severe underbuilding of the deposition, it also yields the highest production rate for a hybrid-finished (e.g., deposited, machined) wall in terms of mm in build direction per minute and the highest buy-to-fly ratio.

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All data is available upon request to the corresponding author.

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Funding

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy DE-EE0008303 and an NDSEG fellowship to Austen Thien.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Austen Thien & Christopher Saldana

  2. Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Thomas Kurfess

Authors
  1. Austen Thien
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  2. Christopher Saldana
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  3. Thomas Kurfess
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Austen Thien, Christopher Saldana. Methodology: Austen Thien. Software: Austen Thien. Validation: Austen Thien, Christopher Saldana, Thomas Kurfess. Formal analysis: Austen Thien. Investigation: Austen Thien. Resources: Austen Thien, Christopher Saldana, Thomas Kurfess. Data curation: Austen Thien. Writing—original draft preparation: Austen Thien. Writing—review and editing: Thomas Kurfess, Christopher Saldana. Supervision, Thomas Kurfess, Christopher Saldana. Project administration: Thomas Kurfess, Christopher Saldana. Funding acquisition: Thomas Kurfess, Christopher Saldana. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Austen Thien.

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Thien, A., Saldana, C. & Kurfess, T. The effect of WAAM process parameters on process conditions and production metrics in the fabrication of single-pass multi-layer wall artifacts. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 119, 531–547 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08266-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08266-x

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