Manufacturing of Large Metallic Components through Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing(WAAM)

Metal additive manufacturing have been in trend due to its ability to produce components at reduced cost and low buy-to- y ratio. There are various techniques employed for metal additive manufacturing depending on energy source and type of raw materials used. Based on raw materials, metal additive manufacturing can be classi ed as wire-based, powder-based and sheet-based (laminated object manufacturing). Amongst these three, wire based systems have higher material e ciency and high deposition rates. They also better suited for continious and uncluttered material supply. Hence, they are most suitable for large components. These wire based systems can be used in conjuction to di erent energy sources like Laser, Electron Beam and Arc. WLAM (wire and laser based additive manufacturing), EBAM (electron beam additive manufacturing) and WAAM (wire and arc based additive manufacturing) are examples of each of these energy sources respectively. In this study, Weld-depsotion based WAAM is chosen. The objective of this work is to fabricate large (greater than 1m in size) metallic components using WAAM process. Parameter study, kinematic setup for such working volumes and thermal analysis of deposition process to minimize distortions are some of the related aspects. Sample components in both multi-pass and single-pass geometries were also fabricated successfuly. This work was mainly carried out for mild steel (ER70S6); some priliminary studies on extending this to IN625 are also presented. Overall, this thesis presents the sutiability of WAAM in conjuction with a robotic or CNC type kinemetic setup to produce large metallic components