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Effects of Pillar-Based Substrate on the Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Process

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Abstract

The Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process uses a metal plate as a substrate for part deposition. The presented work uses small pillars of cuboidal shapes arranged together to form the required deposition surface instead of a single large substrate. The post-processing of WAAM is arduous due to the need for the part removal from the substrate. The pillar-based substrate made this part removal process simpler and reduced the machining requirement. A WAAM setup was designed and developed in-house by integrating the gas metal arc welding (GMAW) with a three-dimensional gantry. The setup was utilised to deposit thin-walled metal parts over the pillar-based substrate. The online recorded temperature at the base using thermocouples confirmed adequate cooling between subsequent layers. The temperature of the pillar-based substrate was compared with the conventional substrate, which ensured proper heat dissipation. The microstructural study and hardness measurement of the deposited parts also confirmed that the pillar-based substrate has little effect on the part quality. The applications of the pillar-based substrate were further extended to demonstrate the deposition of multiple parts on a single substrate and part containing non-planar layers (overhanging features).

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the technical staff of the Central Workshop and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Indore, for their extended help and support. They also thank Dr Satyajit Chatterjee for allowing to access the Tribology Laboratory facilities.

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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Correspondence to Yuvraj K. Madhukar.

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Khan, A.U., Madhukar, Y.K. Effects of Pillar-Based Substrate on the Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Process. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 22, 1311–1321 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-021-00529-7

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