Obtaining uniform deposition with variable wire feeding direction during wire-feed additive manufacturing

Wire-feed additive manufacturing is cost competitive and efficient in producing large and complex components in aerospace applications. However, for the additive manufacturing technologies with lateral wire feeding, including laser wire additive manufacturing, electron beam freeform fabrication, plasma arc welding, and gas tungsten arc welding, it is difficult to obtain uniform deposit due to the variable wire feeding direction. In this work, high-angle wire feeding method is proposed to obtain uniform deposit in gas tungsten arc welding-based additive manufacturing. The results illustrate that low wire feeding angle (30°–50°) causes the deposition to break at the back feeding, meanwhile too high wire feeding angle (70°) leads to many littered droplets on one side of the deposition at the condition of side feeding. A uniform deposition can be obtained at the optimal wire feeding angle of 60° in any wire feeding direction, and the reasons have been discussed based on the temperature distribution characteristics of the arc and molten pool. Furthermore, the deposition layers exhibit similar columnar prior β grains, basketweave microstructure, and tensile properties from different wire feeding directions.