Induction heating is a non-contact-based energy source that has the potential to quickly melt the metal and become the alternate energy source that can be used for additive manufacturing. At present, induction heating is widely used in various industrial applications such as melting, preheating, heat treatment, welding, and brazing. The potential of this source has not been explored in the additive manufacturing domain. However, the use of induction heating in additive manufacturing could lead to low-cost part fabrication as compared to other energy sources such as laser or electron beam. Therefore, this study explores the feasibility of this energy source in additive manufacturing for fabricating parts of metallic materials. An experimental system has been developed by modifying an existing delta three-dimensional printer. An induction heater coil has been incorporated to extruder head for semi-solid processing of the metal alloy. In order to test the viability of the developed system, aluminium material in the filament form has been processed. Obtained results have shown that the induction heating–based energy source is capable of processing metallic materials having a melting point up to 1000° C. The continuous extrusion of the material has been achieved by controlling the extruder temperature using a proportional integral derivative–based controller and k-type thermocouple. The study also discusses various issues and challenges that occurred during the melting of metal with induction heating. The outcomes of this study may be a breakthrough in the area of metal-based additive manufacturing.

An inductive conduction heating process to heat the extruder in wire additive manufacturing is explored through numerical simulation and an in situ infrared imaging. The 2 D Finite Element Method (FEM) based simulation model provides insights into extruder heating in the inductive conduction heating process. The precise temperature control in the extruder can help achieve the efficient flow of material from extruder. The induction coil design variations to control the extruder temperature are computed numerically to obtain an approximate solution thus offers time and cost-saving. The presented study considers the number of turns of coil, coil radius and coil configurations as the induction coil design parameters whereas coil current, and current frequency are considered to be constant. Based on the results, the design of extruder and geometry of induction coil assembly is proposed to efficiently bring the feed material (Al-5356) to semi-solid state. A thermal imaging method is implemented using an infrared camera to analyse the evolution of thermal fields during extruder heating. Comparison of the extruder tip temperature from simulation and experiments shows an agreeable match with a variation of 8.57%.

Induction Heating (IH) method is gaining traction in the field of Additive Manufacturing (AM) as it is a low cost, clean, safe, and precise energy source. Wire as a feedstock material is highly efficient as compared to the powder form in terms of material utilization and economic viability. Thus, the combination of IH and wire feedstock delivery to additive manufacture a part has been explored on an in-house developed novel AM setup. The processing of aluminum wire (Al-5356) in semi-solid form from the extruder, heated using IH method has been performed. The approach adopted in this paper is to perform an in situ infrared imaging to analyze the evolution of thermal field during the extruder heating and metal deposition process. An effective thermal cartography has been undertaken to acquire temperature history of filament, extruder, and deposition process. The temperature profile plot is utilized to understand the temperature distribution and average temperature in the heating, extrusion, and layering process during layer fabrication. The presented work facilitates a priori anticipation to utilize IH as a potential energy source for the metal AM systems.

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