A novel method of bead modeling and control for wire and arc additive manufacturing

Purpose Modeling and control of bead geometry in wire and arc additive manufacturing is significant as it affects the whole manufacturing process. The purpose of this paper is to establish an efficient model to control the bead geometry with fewer experiments in wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM). Design/methodology/approach A multi-sensor system is established to monitor the process parameters and measure the bead geometry information. A dynamic parameters experimental method is proposed for rapid modeling without dozens of experiments. A deep learning method is used for bead modeling and control. To adaptively control the bead geometry in real-time, a closed-loop control system was developed based on the bead model and in situ monitoring. Findings A series of experiments were conducted to train, test and verify the feasibility of the method and system, and the results showed that the proposed method can build the bead model rapidly with high precision, and the closed-loop system can control the forming geometry adaptively. Originality/value The proposed modeling method is novel as the experiment number is reduced. The dynamic parameters experimental method is effective with high precision. The closed-loop control system can control the bead geometry in real-time. The forming accuracy is elevated.