INVESTIGATE AND OPTIMIZE THE PULSING EFFECT OF THERMO CYCLE OF LOW CARBON STEEL ALLOY DEPOSIT IN PLASMA ARC WELDING ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

The work conducted for this paper was to investigate the use of plasma arc welding (PAW) and steel shot as a means of additive manufacturing. A robotic PAW system and automatic shot feeder were used to manufacture linear walls approximately 100 mm long by 7 mm wide and 20 mm tall. The walls were built, layer - by - layer, on plain carbon steel substrate by adding individual 2.5 mm diameter plain carbon steel shot. Each layer was built, shot - by - shot, using a pulse of arc current to form a molten pool on the deposit into which each shot was deposited and melted. The deposition rate, a measure of productivity, was approximately 50 g/hour. Three wall s were built using the same conditions except for the deposit preheat temperature prior to adding each new layer.