Wire Arc Additive and High-Temperature Subtractive Manufacturing of Ti-6Al-4V

We investigated the fabrication and finishing of wall-profile machining by wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) employing plasma welding with Ti-6Al-4V wire. We fabricated and integrated a local shield and a cover for the area below the local shield to achieve higher shielding ability. The tensile strength of the fabricated object met the forging standard for Ti-6Al-4V, but elongation was about 7%. We also focused on the possibility of reducing the cutting force and increasing the efficiency of the finishing process by cutting workpieces softened by high temperature immediately after the deposition process. We investigated the cutting force and tool wear of the fabricated objects heated to 300 °C using ceramics tools. Results showed that although the cutting force was reduced at high temperature, the wear rate of the tools was high, and the increase in cutting force due to wear was significant.

Experimental Investigation of Additive Manufacturing Using a Hot-Wire Plasma Welding Process on Titanium Parts

In this paper, we propose hot-wire plasma welding, a combination of the plasma welding (PAW) process and the hot-wire process in the additive manufacturing (AM) process. Generally, in plasma welding for AM processes, the deposit grain size increases, and the hardness decreases as the wall height increases. The coarse microstructure, along with the large grain size, corresponds to an increase in deposit temperature, which leads to poorer mechanical properties. At the same time, the hot-wire laser process seems to contain an overly high interstitial amount of oxygen and nitrogen. With an increasing emphasis on sustainability, the hot-wire plasma welding process offers significant advantages: deeper and narrow penetration than the cold-wire plasma welding, improved design flexibility, large deposition rates, and low dilution percentages. Thus, the hot-wire plasma welding process was investigated in this work. The wire used in the welding process was a titanium American Welding Society (AMS) 4951F (Grade 2) welding wire (diameter 1.6 mm), in which the welding was recorded in real time with a charge-coupled device camera (CCD camera). We studied three parameters of the hot-wire plasma welding process: (1) the welding speed, (2) wire current, and (3) wire feeding speed. The mechanical and physical properties (porosity, Vickers hardness, microstructure, and tensile strength) were examined. It was found that the number of layers, the length and width of the molten pool, and the width of the deposited bead increased, while the height of the layer increased, and the hot-wire current played an important role in the deposition. In addition, these results were benchmarked against specimens created by a hot-wire plasma welding/wire-based additive manufacturing process with an intention to develop the hot-wire PAW process as a potential alternative in the additive manufacturing industry.

Surface Engineering of Materials Through Weld-Based Technologies

In this chapter, an overview of welding as a technology for surface engineering is explored. According to literature, all types of welding techniques are appropriate for coating applications. However, as a result of process characteristics, some welding processes stand out. The most used welding techniques in the metal coating are arc welding (MIG, TIG, and PAW) and oxyacetylene welding. In the coating of metals using welding techniques, the coatings produced usually have a thickness that ranges between 1 and 6 millimeters. Applications of surface coating have been studied extensively. Such applications include aeronautic industry, sports, transport industries, petroleum and chemical industries, mining, food, and in the electronic industry. Plasma MIG welding is an advanced plasma process that combines the advantages of both MIG and plasma welding. Applications of plasma MIG welding in the surface coating of metals are expected to be explored extensively in the future.

Plasma welding of high-strength aluminum alloys

On the analysis basis of trends in the development of aluminum alloy plasma welding it is shown that in most cases for critical structures there is used welding with a non-consumable electrode on reversed polarity with adding wire material. A welding method with a hollow anode to increase non-consumable tungsten electrode durability is described. It is shown that to increase quality of welded joints in aluminum-lithium alloys the application of plasma-forming gas programmable pulse feed has promising outlooks. In this case side by side with the decrease of such defects as pores and oxide films the obtaining of more fine-grained structure in metal seams is marked.