Applications of Open Source GMAW-Based Metal 3-D Printing

Abstract

The metal 3-D printing market is currently dominated by high-end applications, which make it inaccessible for small and medium enterprises, fab labs, and individual makers who are interested in the ability to prototype and additively manufacture final products in metal. Recent progress led to low-cost open-source metal 3-D printers using a gas metal arc welding (GMAW)-based print head. This reduced the cost of metal 3-D printers into the range of desktop prosumer polymer 3-D printers. Consequent research established good material properties of metal 3-D printed parts with readily-available weld filler wire, reusable substrates, thermal and stress properties, toolpath planning, bead-width control, mechanical properties, and support for overhangs. These previous works showed that GMAW-based metal 3-D printing has a good adhesion between layers and is not porous inside the printed parts, but they did not proceed far enough to demonstrate applications. In this study, the utility of the GMAW approach to 3-D printing is investigated using a low-cost open-source metal 3-D printer and a converted Computer Numerical Control router machine to make useful parts over a range of applications including: fixing an existing part by adding a 3-D metal feature, creating a product using the substrate as part of the component, 3-D printing in high resolution of useful objects, near net objects, and making an integrated product using a combination of steel and polymer 3-D printing. The results show that GMAW-based 3-D printing is capable of distributed manufacturing of useful products for a wide variety of applications for sustainable development.

Open source arc analyzer: Multi-sensor monitoring of wire arc additive manufacturing

“…In this work, a constant voltage Millermatic 190 welder was used as a power source. The build platform is a converted CNC router parts mill used for X-Y-Z control, which has been previously described by Nilsiam et al [1] . The electrode wire was fed from a spool on top of a moving carriage down through a custom wire feed driver assembly modified from a spoolmate (Miller) gun.…”

“…The high costs and complexity of commercial metal additive manufacturing (AM) restricts access to the technology for distributed manufacturing and rapid prototyping in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), fablabs, research centers, many labs and individual makers [1] . The self-Replicating Rapid-prototyper (RepRap) community [2] , [3] , [4] , has developed an open-source metal 3-D printer with a gas metal arc welding (GMAW)-based print head, which reduces the costs of metal 3-D printers to less than $1200 [5] and thus greatly expands accessibility of metal AM.…”

“…To push this technology to applications beyond those only requiring a low resolution [1] process, monitoring and control of the arc are necessary. This is because of the volatile nature of metal liquefying and being deposited during welding creates inconsistencies and weld quality problems [28] .…”

Finding Ideal Parameters for Recycled Material Fused Particle Fabrication-Based 3D Printing Using an Open Source Software Implementation of Particle Swarm Optimization

“…PSO Experimenter could be used to optimize not only waste materials but also various other materials such as PP or HDPE, which are not yet commonly used in commercial fused filament-based 3D printing because of their challenging thermal expansion coefficients. In addition, the software could be used to take the guess work out of tuning and calibrating machines such as circuit mills, 67 metal 3D printers, 68 and bioprinters. 1 …”

Evaluation of Metallic Parts Defects to Determine Repair Process Strategies through Laser Metal Deposition

“…An essential step in the process that needs improvement is the generation of deposition trajectories since the available slicing software is developed with a focus on polymer additive manufacturing technologies. On the other hand, even if it were possible to generate deposition strategies through subtractive manufacturing technologies software [15], in both cases, it is necessary to consider the intrinsic characteristics of the LMD process [16], namely material selection, laser power, feed rate, laser spot diameter, toolpath, deposition distance, as well as the management of the heat input in the repaired part and the weld zone, the material addition and associated effects during the build-up process [17]. Fronted with this problem, several researchers have proposed trajectory generation solutions, such as Liu [18], which presented a method to generate smooth toolpaths for the LMD process to improve the deposition quality.…”