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

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).