Development of Directed Energy Deposition Gas Metal Arc (DED-GMA) setup for fabricating Aluminium Alloy and Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Process Parameters on Metallurgical and Mechanical Properties of fabricated components
Metal additive manufacturing is the most effective way to manufacture short and complex components with near-net shapes but the problem with this process is time-consuming and costly. Wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is the most advanced technique used to fabricate desired parts by depositing material in layer-by-layer sequence. Since the last two decades, researchers have been doing investigations on Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM) of aluminium and its alloys. However, not enough research has been done on 5356 aluminium alloy fabricated by the Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) process. This study focused on investigating the effect of process parameters on WAAM fabricated 5356 aluminium alloy and parts fabricated by other metal alloys. Three process parameters, namely wire feed rate, gas flow rate, and welding speed are considered with three levels of values for the fabrication of weld beads. Taguchi method is adapted to reduce the number of trials for selecting the working range of process parameters.