A Propeller Blade Manufacturing by Hybrid Additive Manufacturing System

Abstract

Hybrid Additive Manufacturing (Hybrid-AM) describes multi-operational or multi-functional additive manufacturing systems. In industry, the increasing tendency in applications of Hybrid-AM brings up the challenge of improving novel methods for the manufacturing of new or hybrid parts. Hybrid AM can produce fully functional assemblies without any assembly operation. In this study, the hybrid additive manufacturing system means that an object is to be designed partly made from prefabricated or off-theshelf parts and added by the wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process. For this purpose, a prototype Hybrid-AM system using the pulsed TIG-Wire-Arc technique was designed and constructed. The constructed The shaped metal deposition (SMD) system has three drivers on the x, y, and z-axes and an additional rotary driver (fourth axis). Using the Hybrid-AM machine the wire form material can be deposited on an existing primitive profile i.e., a rod, pipe, a profile, or any 3D surfaces with reducing production time. In this way, spiral-shaped features or twisted blade shapes can be added to cylindrical parts. In this study, a stainless-steel propeller blade was deposited on a pipe by using the developed prototype Hybrid AM machine. A non-planar toolpath was used to deposition the subsequent layers and the surface of the propeller blade was finished using 4-axis CNC machining.