No abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is proving to be a promising new and economical technique for the manufacture of metal parts. This technique basically consists of depositing material in a more or less precise way until a solid is built. This stage of material deposition allows the acquisition of a part with a quasi-final geometry (considered a Near Net Shape process) with a very high raw material utilization rate. There is a wide variety of different manufacturing techniques for the production of components in metallic materials. Although significant research work has been carried out in recent years, resulting in the wide dissemination of results and presentation of reviews on the subject, this paper seeks to cover the applications of symmetry, and its techniques and principles, to the additive manufacturing of metals.

Direct energy deposition is gaining much visibility in research as one of the most adaptable additive manufacturing technologies for industry due to its ease of application and high deposition rates. The possibility of combining these materials to obtain parts with variable mechanical properties is an important task to be studied. The combination of two types of steel, mild steel ER70-6 and stainless steel SS 316L, for the fabrication of a wall by direct energy deposition was studied for this paper. The separate fabrication of these two materials was studied for the microstructurally flawless fabrication of bimetallic walls. As a result of the application of superimposed and overlapped strategies, two walls were fabricated and the microstructure, mechanical properties and hardness of the resulting walls are analyzed. The walls obtained with both strategies present dissimilar regions; the hardness where the most present material is ER70-6 is around 380 HV, and for SS 316L, it is around 180 HV. The average values of ultimate tensile strength (UTS) are 869 and 628 MPa, yield strength (YS) are 584 and 389 MPa and elongation at break are 20% and 36%, respectively, in the cases where we have more ER70-6 in the sample than SS 316L. This indicates an important relationship between the distribution of the materials and their mechanical behavior.

The field of additive manufacturing has experienced a surge in popularity over recent decades, particularly as a viable alternative to traditional metal part production. Directed energy deposition (DED) is one of the most promising additive technologies, characterized by its high deposition rate, with wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) being a prominent example. Despite its advantages, DED is known to produce parts with suboptimal surface quality and geometric accuracy, which has been a major obstacle to its widespread adoption. This is due, in part, to a lack of understanding of the complex geometries produced by the additive layer. To address this challenge, researchers have focused on characterizing the geometry of the additive layer, particularly the outer part of the bead. This paper specifically investigates the geometrical characteristics and symmetry of walls produced by comparing two different techniques: an oscillated strategy and overlapping beads.