Development of a Multidirectional Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) Process with Pure Object Manipulation: Process Introduction and First Prototypes

Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing, vol. 5, pp. 134

Abstract

Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) with eccentric wire feed requires defined operating conditions due to the possibility of varying shapes of the deposited and solidified material depending on the welding torch orientation. In consequence, the produced component can contain significant errors because single bead geometrical errors are cumulatively added to the next layer during a building process. In order to minimise such inaccuracies caused by torch manipulation, this article illustrates the concept and testing of object-manipulated WAAM by incorporating robotic and welding technologies. As the first step towards this target, robotic hardware and software interfaces were developed to control the robot. Alongside, a fixture for holding the substrate plate was designed and fabricated. After establishing the robotic setup, in order to complete the whole WAAM process setup, a Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) process was built and integrated into the system. Later, an experimental plan was prepared to perform single and multilayer welding experiments as well as for different trajectories. According to this plan, several welding experiments were performed to decide the parametric working range for the further WAAM experiments. In the end, the results of the first multilayer depositions over intricate trajectories are shown. Further performance and quality optimization strategies are also discussed at the end of this article.

Authors 8

1. Khushal B. Parmar corresponding Aachen Welding and Joining Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Welding and Joining Institute (ISF), RWTH Aachen University, Pontstrasse 49, 52062 Aachen, Germany

2. Lukas Oster Aachen Welding and Joining Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Welding and Joining Institute (ISF), RWTH Aachen University, Pontstrasse 49, 52062 Aachen, Germany

3. Samuel Mann Aachen Welding and Joining Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Welding and Joining Institute (ISF), RWTH Aachen University, Pontstrasse 49, 52062 Aachen, Germany

4. Rahul Sharma Aachen Welding and Joining Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Welding and Joining Institute (ISF), RWTH Aachen University, Pontstrasse 49, 52062 Aachen, Germany

5. Uwe Reisgen Aachen Welding and Joining Institute

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Welding and Joining Institute (ISF), RWTH Aachen University, Pontstrasse 49, 52062 Aachen, Germany

6. Jan Wiartalla Aachen Institute of Mechanism Theory

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Mechanism Theory, Machine Dynamics and Robotics (IGMR), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstrasse 18, 52064 Aachen, Germany

7. Mathias Hüsing Aachen Institute of Mechanism Theory

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Mechanism Theory, Machine Dynamics and Robotics (IGMR), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstrasse 18, 52064 Aachen, Germany

8. Burkhard J. Corves Aachen Institute of Mechanism Theory

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Mechanism Theory, Machine Dynamics and Robotics (IGMR), RWTH Aachen University, Eilfschornsteinstrasse 18, 52064 Aachen, Germany