Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing Toolpath Optimization Using a Dexel-Based Temperature Prediction Model

Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) has been established as a new technology for industrial use-cases such as low-lot size manufacturing or part repair services. A key aspect when developing such WAAM processes is thermal management during the layer-by-layer metal deposition. To maintain a stable welding process in-depth knowledge about the heat distribution is required. Thus, predicting the heat flux for a given part geometry already in the process development stage using Computer-Aided-Manufacturing Systems (CAM) would be beneficial. However, current state-of-the-art approaches are computationally expensive and time intensive. Therefore, they are hardly applicable for WAAM applications. In this paper, a dexel-based metal cutting and deposition simulation is combined with a temperature prediction model, which is integrated in the toolpath planning algorithm when defining a build-up strategy for a given part geometry. The approach is based on a temperature prediction algorithm, that calculates temperature fields for deposited material volume considering basic material properties. Calculated temperature fields can be utilized for optimizing welding toolpath to achieve stable process conditions across the part geometry.