Development of a cold wire-feed additive layer manufacturing system using shaped metal deposition method

Shaped metal deposition (SMD) method would be an alternative way to traditional manufacturing methods, especially for complex featured and large scale solid parts and it is particularly used for aerospace structural components, manufacturing and repairing of die/molds and middle-sized dense parts. This method is implemented by depositing continuous cold or hot-water melted via welding arc plasma heat. This paper presents the designing, constructing, and controlling of an additive manufacturing system using TIG plus wire based Shaped metal deposition (TW-SMD) method. The aim of the current study is to design and develop an integrated system which is able to reduce time consuming and boring task of deposition process. The developed additive system is capable of producing near net shaped components of sizes not exceed 400 mm in 3 directions directly from CAD drawing. The results showed that the developed system succeeded to produce near net geometries and error-free depositions for various features of SS308LSi components. Additionally, workshop tests have been conducted in order to verify the capability and reliability of the developed AM system.