Retrofitment of a CNC machine for omni-directional tungsten inert gas cladding

Metal inert gas (MIG), Tungsten INERT GAs (TIG), laser and Electron beam (EB) cladding processes are used in cladding-based Additive manufacturing (AM). Only in the case of MIG, the raw-stock is fed axially into the molten pool resulting in the omni-directional cladding. In other processes, the raw-stock is fed off-axially into the molten pool resulting in deviation in the bead geometry from its actual trajectory and varying bead cross-section along the path. As the trajectories vary widely in cladding-based AM, it is required to maintain a consistent raw-stock feeding condition (namely, front, back or sides). Therefore, an auxiliary wire orienting mechanism has been developed which can be easily retrofitted with a conventional TIG cladding torch and CNC machine. The wire orientation angle is computed on-the-fly and hence the NC programme need not provide this information. Although this implementation was demonstrated for TIG, the same methodology holds good for laser and EB too.