In-process control of distortion in wire and arc additive manufacturing based on a flexible multi-point support fixture

Distortion induced by non-uniform thermal gradients is one of the major constraints in wire and arc additive manufacturing. A novel flexible multi-point support fixture (FMSF) featured by reconfigured working surface and controllable restraining force is developed as an in-process distortion control technique. FMSF allows the distortion to be suppressed by adjusting the restraining force imposed onto the substrate dynamically as the number of layers increases. Both simulations and experiments are conducted to verify its effectiveness and compare it with other common restraint forms including clamping and pre-springing. The multi-layer deposition results show that a reduction of 96.3% in angular distortion and 86.5% in longitudinal bending distortion are obtained with FMSF, which exhibits great superiority over clamping and pre-springing.