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Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing 22 (2006) 113123 www.elsevier.com/locate/rcim

Hybrid adaptive layer manufacturing: An Intelligent art of direct metal rapid tooling process
Sreenathbabu Akula, K.P. Karunakaran
Mechanical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India Received 21 June 2004; received in revised form 2 February 2005; accepted 11 February 2005

Abstract A direct metal rapid tool making process, hybrid-layered manufacturing (HLM), was developed for building metallic dies and molds. This unique methodology has a numerical controlled system that integrates the TransPulse Synergic Metal Inert Gas (MIG)/ Metal Active Gas (MAG) welding process for near-net layer deposition and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling process for net shaping. A customized software program was made to calculate the required adaptive slice thickness for the deposition of the ller metal with welding process as successive layers from the lowest to the topmost layer direction and to generate the required NC codes for machining from the top to the bottom layer direction of the deposited metallic layers for attaining the required contour prole shape. To implement this proposed process, a low-cost three-axis manipulator was fabricated with stepper motor divers in open-loop control and integrated with the weld machine. Adequate isolation to protect the motion control electronics from welding spike was incorporated. Synchronization of this two-step processing of each layer, yielding near-net deposition with welding process and near-net shaping with CNC milling operation offers a new accelerator way of building metal tools and dies. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Rapid tooling (RT); Welding; CNC machining; Slicing; Molds and dies

1. Introduction Building pre-production models of a product to test various aspects of the aesthetic, ergonomic, functioning and design are known as prototypes. With the concept of globalization, the multinational corporations in the open market system, the competition among the industries has become very acute. The demand for shorter development time, and reduced product life cycle resulted in the emergence of a new paradigm called Time Compression Techniques (TCT) or Rapid Prototyping (RP) [1,2]. The main process stages involved in fabricating prototypes are common to most RP systems that are currently available or under development, but the
Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: sreenath@iitb.ac.in (S. Akula), karuna@iitb.ac.in (K.P. Karunakaran). 0736-5845/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rcim.2005.02.006

mechanisms by which the individual layers are created obviously depend on the particular system. A new approach known as Direct RP through which a prototype of the parent material can be generated has emerged [3,4]. Some use laser welding whereas a majority of them use Metal Inert Gas (MIG) welding. In Laser Generating and High-Speed Milling process developed at Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (FhG-IPT), Germany, the raw material used is binder-coated metallic powder, which when passed through the nozzle is melted by a laser beam resulting in the deposition of the near-net layer. The layer is then milled to net-shape. As this process makes use of uniform slicing of 0th-order edge approximation, it is not rapid enough [5]. Shape Deposition Manufacturing (SDM) process developed at Carnegie Mellon University, US, uses an additive process to deposit the rough material and a machining process to get the desired accuracy. However,

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instead of sintering by a laser beam, they use a deposition process called micro-casting, which is in between metal spraying and welding processes. It uses 5axis machining that enables to make the proles [6]. 3D Welding process developed at the University of Nottingham also uses an MIG welding process to build metallic prototypes [7]. Using a 0.8 mm diameter wire, they report a building speed of 6500 mm/min, the bead size being 4.5 mm wide and 1.4 mm thick. Although the building speed of this process is very attractive, the poor accuracy of 0.5 mm limits its applications. Similar research is going on at several universities abroad although they are not far away from commercialization. Some of them are Southern Methodist University, US [8]; Craneld University, UK, Loughborough University, UK; Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany; Korean Institute of Science & Technology (KIST) [9], University of Kentucky, Lexington, US [10], and University of Michigan, US. Each has its unique features and they differ from one another in various ways. Similarly, they differ in the type of slicing used, method of support structure, application areas, etc. At the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, it was proposed to develop a hybrid-layered manufacturing (HLM) process with a numerical controlled system that integrates the Pulse synergic MIG/Metal Active Gas (MAG) process and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling process to build tools and dies [11].

2. Proposed process 2.1. Hybrid-layered manufacturing In order to manufacture tools more accurately and rapidly, a direct rapid tooling process should have the following characteristics:

 

   

sintering or melting of the hard material directly; two-step processing of each layer, the rst step yields the near-net layer deposition/formation and the second step machines the layer to the required accuracy; efcient Slicing technique; elimination/minimization of staircase effect; high rate of material deposition; ability to build support structures.

Considering these essential features for the direct rapid tooling process, it was proposed to develop a unique methodology for building metallic dies and molds by employing a numerical controlled system that integrates the TransPulse Synergic MIG/MAG welding process for near-net layer deposition and CNC milling process for net shaping. The TransPulse Synergic MIG/ MAG provides the controlled heat and mass transfer

with precise depth of bead penetration and the CNC machining enhances both the surface quality and dimensional accuracy with great manufacturing agility. To implement this process, a programmable logic controller (PLC)-based low-cost three-axis manipulator was fabricated with stepper motor diver in open-loop control. The tool head of the manipulator will hold the welding torch and milling cutter. At any time either milling or welding will take place, and for that the welding gun can be moved up and down with a pneumatic operated piston. The NC codes M08 and M09 are used to invoke the switching functions of the pneumatic piston to move up and down, respectively. Further, the NC codes M03 and M04 are made to control the on/off of the welding torch during the metal deposition. The parameters related to welding processes such as the speed of the welding ller wire, diameter of ller wire, type of ller material, voltage, current, gap between the electrodes, shielding gas, built style, etc. are to be ne-tuned and frozen after performing the experiments. While a majority of the welding parameters will be controlled externally, the necessary functions to integrate the welding process with the machine motion will be carried out by user dened G and M codes. The framework of this research also consists of a customized software program that uses the zeroth-order edge approximation uniform [12] and adaptive slicing strategy [13] to calculate each slice thickness to be deposited with the required metal as successive layers from the lowest to the topmost layer with the welding process. Further, it generates the required CNC code for machining from the top to the bottom layer direction of the deposited metallic layers to attain the required contour prole shape with user-specied accuracy. The process does not pose any restriction or loss of accuracy on the prototype as its size grows. Since the size of the part is limited only by the traverse available on the CNC machine, a larger CNC machine can be used to produce large tools. In this context, it is interesting to note that the die halves used in injection molding, pressure die casting, sheet metal forming, etc. will be free of reentrant features overhanging features since they need to open and close in operation. Therefore, building such dies in the proposed process will not require support structures. Furthermore, since the fatigue loading they suffer in operation is considerably less, these tools will serve the purpose even without any homogenization operation such as Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) process [14]. The tools produced using this process may be inferior to their conventional counterparts in composition and tool life but these will generate the nal products as accurately as any other tool. This HLM process can be retrotted to any CNC machining center [15] (Fig. 1).

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Fig. 2. Die of a connecting rod.

Fig. 1. Developed HLM machine.

3. Methodology Preliminary work in the area of 3D welding has shown that complex shapes can be formed, but the results are not perfect. The shape and dimensions of the weld bead are very important in the use of 3D welding as an RP system, since these will determine the limits to the wall thickness, which may be produced and will also inuence the quality of the surface nish. Although MIG/MAG welding cannot produce the required accuracy, it is economical, safe, portable and easy to maintain. Since only near-net layer is being deposited in a hybrid process, low accuracy is acceptable [16]. The developed HLM process will have the following three stages: i. building the near-net shape of the tool; ii. heat treatment for stress relieving and strengthening; iii. machining the near-net shape of the tool to nal dimensions.

Fig. 3. Zeroth-order edge uniform slicing.

deposition process are as follows:

3.1. Building the near-net shape of the tool The metal deposition is done using a pulse Synergic MIG/ MAG welding machine. The steps of the

Step one: Generate the tool path required to build uniform/adaptive layers of zeroth-order edge approximation from the bottom to the top: The tool path consists of the paths for the welding gun and the face mill and the required switching functions M08 and M09. The clad zone for each layer will be larger than the bottom contours of the layer by a machining allowance. This allowance is from 0.5 to 2.0 mm. The switching functions are required for change over between welding and face milling, activating the welding operation and change over in tool offset. The zeroth-order edge uniform slices of the die of a connecting rod (Fig. 2) are shown in Fig. 3. Step two: Fix a substrate on the table: This substrate will conform to the mountings on the press or injection molding machine on which it will be used. It is recommended to have as thick a substrate as possible. This will reduce distortion as well as building time. This is possible because the dies invariably have a thick bottom, which can become part of the substrate. Step three: Select the necessary parameters on the welding system: The weld parameters of attained well-dened bead geometry and layer thickness with adequate

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machining allowance are selected. The weld machine is operated in pulsed synergic mode. Step four: Deposit the bottom most layer on the substrate: The welding path in any section or layer is of two types: one is area-lling path (Fig. 4a) and the other is contouring path (Fig. 4b). First, the deposition takes place using area-lling paths and this is followed by contouring. The deposited geometry fully covers the required layer. However, it will be required to optimize the path so as to transfer heat uniformly over the layer. This is essential in view of the large amount of heat input. Furthermore, arrangement for preheating the substrate may also be required for desirable patterns of grain size distribution. After completion of the metal deposition at the bottom most layer, the switching functions are invoked to change over between welding and face milling process by halting the welding process and activating the face milling process and vice versa. For this operation, a pneumatic system is used to swivel between the welding gun and the milling cutter. Step ve: Face mill the top surface of the layer to attain the required layer thickness: The instability of the arc welding process may cause a malfunction/defect in the middle of the weld bead. To minimize and correct the deviation in successive multiple layer deposition, face milling operation is performed. This process step ensures the vertical Z accuracy of building metal layer. Furthermore, the welded surface may have an oxidized layer that inuences the subsequent layer deposited on top of it.

Fig. 5. Face milling on weld deposition.

When milling is done, welding happens on a nascent surface giving good quality of welding. Therefore, it is required to do face milling after every layer deposition though techno-economically not feasible for each deposited layer (Fig. 5). Repeat the above two steps for the remaining layers till a casting like rough shape is obtained.

At the end, we will attain the near-net shape of the required tool on the substrate. 3.2. Heat treatment for stress relieving and strengthening Depending on the pattern of heat input, the grain structure may be non-uniform and there could be considerable amount of internal stresses. To relieve them, suitable heat treatment is performed by annealing or normalizing. HIP can densify the component and improve its mechanical properties and fatigue life. 3.3. Machining the near-net shape of the tool to nal dimensions All the horizontal surfaces of the tool are nished by the face mill during the deposition stage and the edges of the layers are still rough. These edges are machined in this stage. This is done with the help of an end mill. The tool paths consist of the paths for milling the edges of each layer using a ball end mill in scan milling mode using a maximum of three axes. The type and diameter of the cutter will be automatically selected for different regions by analyzing the local geometry [17]. The approach involves splitting the machining surface into three groups for the purpose of generating the cutter path for their automatic machining: (i) a set of horizontal surfaces, (ii) a set of vertical surfaces and (iii) the set of remaining surfaces. The rst set of surfaces has already been machined during face milling; the surfaces may, however, require touchup if spatter falls on them. The other two sets of surfaces will be machined using a at or bull or ball end mill depending on whether they are connected to the neighboring surface patches sharply or through llets [18,19].

Fig. 4. Area-lling styles: (a) direction-parallel (also known as zigzag), (b) contour-parallel (also known as spiral).

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Finally, after completion of all these stages, the desired metallic tool is attained.

4. HLM software The HLM process consists of a custom-made software program that uses the zeroth-order edge approximation slicing strategy of the RP paradigm to calculate each slice thickness to be deposited with the required metal as successive layers from the lowest to the topmost layer with the welding process and it also generates the required CNC code for machining from the top to the bottom layer direction of the deposited metallic layers to attain the required contour prole shape with userspecied accuracy. Synchronization of the welding process with work-piece/substrate motion and CNC milling operation offers a new accelerator way of building metal parts and tools. Three types of NC programs are required in HLM: i. paths for the layered weld deposition; ii. paths for face milling each layer; iii. paths for nish milling. The rst step for generating the welding path is to slice the stereolithography (STL) le of the Computer Aided Design (CAD) model into uniform layers of zeroth-order edge approximation [20,21]. This results in a set of loops dening each layer. During the near-net layer generation, more material deposition has to account for the machining allowance. Therefore, the loops dening each layer must be offset by the machining allowance [22]. Having offset the loops of the layer, the welding torch has to move along the contours of the loops as well as their interior as per the area-lling program. The area lling could be directionparallel or contour-parallel as described earlier. The surface obtained after weld deposition will be scalloped and have spatter deposition. In order to maintain Z accuracy as well as to provide a at nascent surface for the next layer deposition, face milling is done. This is relatively simple and is same for all layers but for the Z coordinates. Having thus obtained the near-net layer, it has to go for heat treatment and then nish machining. For this purpose, a program for the layered machining of the CAD surfaces has been developed. This nishing is done within the required scallop tolerance and it can make use of ball, bull and at end mills. The customized software, termed as Hybrid Layered Manufacturing Software (HLMSoft), was developed to run under Microsoft Windows platform. The code was based on using Microsoft Visual C++ language. Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) were used to develop the menus, dialog boxes and icons and the graphic outputs were rendered using OpenGL graphics library. The

N0001 N0020 N0030 N0040 N0050 N0060 N0070 N0120 : : : : N0500 : : : : : : N3990 N4000

G28 G28 M08 G10 G55 G90 G00 M03

Z0 X0 Y0 // To move pneumatic piston down L2 P1 X40.0 Y60.0 Z-150.0 G01 G21 F1000 X0 Y0 //To initiate the welding process

M04 //To turn off the welding process

M09 //To lift the pneumatic piston up M30

Fig. 6. Output NC File of HLMSoftware.

output les generated from the software, i.e. the weld deposition path, face mill cutter path and the coarse slice-machining paths, are of standard NC format as shown in Fig. 6. These output les are compatible with the protocol of the controller card SC03. The controller card passes on these signals to the Control Box that amplies the power of these signals and feeds them to the drive system. 4.1. Input format The CAD model in an STL format, which is the de facto standard for most of the RP processes, acts as the input format for the software. The STL le consists of unordered triangular facets, representing the surface of an object. The tessellated facets are described by a set of x, y and z coordinates for each of the three vertices and an outward pointing unit normal vector (Fig. 7). 4.2. Sectioning of the STL body with a plane A veried and correct STL le of the CAD model in binary format acts as the input le. The rst step in this process includes sectioning the tessellated body at different vertical heights (z_levels) in relation to the layer thickness to attain the information about the number of contour loops, orientation of each loop and the vertices of each loop [23]. 4.3. Coarse slicing Coarse slicing of the CAD model is the rst step for processing the body. Coarse slicing comprises of decomposing the complex object into slices of simpler geometry and then passing them for ner slicing. In a coarse slicing, the number of loops in the top z_level and in the bottom z_level will be the same, i.e. for each loop in the bottom z_level there will be a corresponding loop at the top level. In this slicing process it is essential to establish the mapping between the top and the bottom contours of a coarse slice.

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Fig. 7. Various coarse slices in connecting rod. (a) Cross section at Bottom Slice, (b) Cross section at Middle Slice, (c) Cross section at Top Slice.

Fig. 8. Dialog Box of settings.

Further, each coarse slice is divided in accordance to the user-dened/required uniform slice or adaptive slice thickness known as Fine Slicing [24]. Fine Slicing is an iterative process to calculate slice thickness based on the local curvature of the body. The data attained through the Fine Slices are utilized for the path generation of the MIG/MAG welding gun and the face-milling operation. 4.4. Setting the process parameters Using the dialog box as shown in Fig. 8, the user can input the required parameters for welding as well as milling processes. Welding-related parameters to be input are as follows:

Finish-milling-related parameters to be input are:

  

cutter diameter (of the ball end millinitially only ball end mill was used), cutter feed rate, cutter speed. Parameters for Z control are:

     

Z-clear, Z-rapid. Parameters for work offset are: X-work offset, Y-work offset, Z-work offset.

     

type of area-ll (direction-parallel or contour-parallel); slice thickness; bead step over; welding direction (applicable only to direction-parallel area-ll); machining allowance; welding feed rate, i.e. torch speed. Face-milling-related parameters to be input are:

4.5. Weld deposition path With the consideration of the limitations of the welding process, the path for the welding gun has to be generated to deposit the ller metal for attaining the required slice prole shape and thickness. The tool path is optimized to transfer heat uniformly over the layer as the heat build-up due to the welding process may result in part malformation and collapse of the structure. Control of parameters and trajectory is added to the start and the end portions of the weld in order to make

 

diameter of the face mill, feed rate for face mill.

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their thickness and width similar to that of the central portion of the weld. The joints (cross-sectional sequence) of weld pass decrease precision of the weld deposition. So, to improve the deposition speed and precision, it is necessary to optimize the number of weld passes and joints between them. Shrinkage and machining allowances are to be added to Fine Slice contours. The outer contours will have a positive offset, while the inner ones negative. The top and bottom z_level contours of a layer are merged (obtain the union of the outer contour and intersection of inner contours). The slice thus obtained after offsetting and merging is passed for mesh generation in order to achieve the zigzag tool path segments [2527]. These area-ll paths are then fed through the controller to the three-axis manipulator (on which work piece is xed) and the weld machine to initiate the metal deposition of the ller wire in a desired layer-by-layer fashion.

then fed to the HLM machine for the generation of the nal shape of the model.

5. Experiments and illustrations Preliminary experiments are carried out on the TransPulse Synergic MIG/MAG machine, with 12 mm diameter ER70S-6 ller wire and shielding gas composition of 82% Ar+18% CO2, to ne-tune the required weld process parameters to attain the optimized weld bead geometry. Unlike the conventional weld deposition, the HLM process requires low heat input and low weld penetration [29]; so the preliminary weld parameters are constrained to the low current range (40 to 130 A) of short circuit and globular metal transfer modes only. The excessive remelting of the previously deposited metal will disrupt the geometry of the earlier formed layers as the large droplet size will contribute more heat to the substrate and result in a more pronounced nger-shaped penetration [30]. Further, the excess residual heat due to the delayed solidication results in large amounts of porosity, poor surface nish and increased material ow. On a Mild Steel base plate, 10 uniform weld layers are deposited by 1.2 mm ER70S-6 Filler wire at 1000 mm/ min weld speed maintaining 10 mm stick out distance with a zigzag weld path to build a 80 80 12 mm3 rectangular block. The nal deposited specimen is cross sectioned at different lengths to determine the hardness and microstructure. The hardness is measured on the Rockwell hardness-testing machine for each individual deposited weld layer as shown in Fig. 9. The crosssectional views of the deposited specimen showed no sign of porosity presence in between the layers. The microstructure of the specimen was seen through the ESEM for the identication of the growth of the dendrites. The heat-affected zone of the weld pool varies with the amount of heat input into the deposited layer and inuences on the formation of martensite, which alters the hardness of the deposited layer. Martensite, a hard brittle form of steel, has extreme
22.5 22

4.6. Machining path With the welding process, attaining the accurate contour prole shape of the coarse slice is difcult. For that, end-milling operation is performed to attain the shape and accuracy. The tool path of the end mill is generated with relation to coarse slicing and in accordance to rst-order edge adaptive approximation. Adaptive slicing with rst-order edge approximation makes use of ruled surfaces [28]. As the coarse slice passes the information of loops between the top and the bottom layers, a ruled surface has to be foud within the upper limit deviation. In order to calculate the deviation, a line is tted to connect a point in the bottom loop and the corresponding point in the top loop without violating the tolerance constraint cusp height. The corresponding point in the top loop is the one having the same surface normal vector and nearest to the bottom point. This results in the formation of a zigzag tool path with the tool moving from top to bottom and back several times. However, this tool path is not useful in actual practice since it is possible to use it only for a tool of negligible dimensions, i.e. a point tool. Therefore, the data generated by this approach have to be modied for tool accommodation. Hence, every point to be calculated is to be offset normal by an extent of tool radius (in the plane of the loop). If the loop is extracted from a positive simple body, outward normal is used and if it is extracted from a negative simple body, the inward normal is used. The normal is calculated by considering the immediate vertices on both sides of the calculated point. Thus, we get a zigzag path for the center of the tool that is written out in a cutter location (CL) le. The tool path generated contains a list of vertices that contains the co-ordinates of the points. These paths are

RockWell Hardness

21.5 21 20.5 20 19.5 19 18.5 18

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Layer Number 9 10

Hardness

Fig. 9. Variation of hardness with weld layer.

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120
1600 1400 Arbitrary Unit 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Diffraction Angle 2*theta (degrees)

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Fig. 10. X-ray diffraction pattern of the deposited layer.

Weld Bead Width

hardness and low ductility, and its formation is controlled by decreasing the rate of cooling of the weld bead (Figs. 10 and 11). To predict the intermediate weld bead width and height at various operating process parameters of wire feed rate and weld speed, experiments are performed based on the statistical optimizing techniques of regressive analysis [32,33]. The region of exploration for tting the rst-order model is (1.22.8) m/min of wire feed rate and (400800) mm/min of weld speed. Controlling factors Levels 1 Wire feed rate (m/min) Weld speed (mm/min) 1.2 400 0 2.0 600 +1 2.8 800

Fig. 11. ESEM image microstructure of the layer.

10 8 6 4 2 0 400 600 800

7.66 6.74

at 20 volt at 21 volt
6.54 5.78

5.4 4.36

4.92 3.76

1000

Weld Speed

Fig. 12. Variation of weld speed with weld bead width.

^ yw 3:6425 1:09x1 0:72x2 and the reinforcement weld bead height as ^ yh 1:18125 0:2875x1 0:2625x2 , where x1 is wire feed rate and x2 is weld speed. Due to the consistence of the TransPulse Synergic MIG/MAG welding controller, with the co-relation of the above-derived equations the corresponding wire feed rate and weld speed are estimated to build the weld deposition for various slice layer thicknesses in relation to adaptive slicing [34] (Figs. 12 and 13).

Weld Bead Height

The collected response data are tted in the rst-order model forthe weld bead width as

2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 400 600 800 2.2 2 1.6 1.4

at 20 volt at 21 volt

1.4 1.2

1.2 1

1000

Weld Speed
Fig. 13. Variation of weld speed with weld bead height.


6. Fabrication of HLM machine In the implementation of the HLM process, the following steps are involved in retrotting:

  

fabrication of the low-cost three-axis manipulator (details in Table 1);

mounting of the welding torch on the spindle head as shown in the Fig. 14; interfacing welding machine and the three-axis manipulator so that the welding operations can be initiated and stopped through the NC codes; a xture for cooling the substrate; incorporation of shields so that the occasional spatter does not affect the structure of the three-axis manipulator.

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S. Akula, K.P. Karunakaran / Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing 22 (2006) 113123 Table 1 Specications of the low-cost PC-based three-axis manipulator Traverse Accuracy on each axis Rapid speed Speed during interpolation Interpolations required Number of switching functions Lead screw type Drive type Kinematics Structure Maximum load on the table Spindle Attachment for welding torch X400 mm, Y300 mm, Z300 mm 70.05 mm 2500 mm/min (max) 1000 mm/min (max) Rapid and linear motions simultaneously on all three axes Eight controllable through NC program such as M codes Ball lead screws on all three axes Stepper motors in open loop X, Y motions by moving the table and Z by the tool head. Machined and fastened structure 100 kg (the job being built) 1 HP motor with gear reduction to give 200 rpm. Face mill is clamped through collet and draw bolt A pneumatically operated slide with 50 mm traverse 121

Fig. 14. HLM machine with modied tool head.

With low investment, a three-axis manipulator was fabricated for the HLM process as shown in Fig. 6. The horizontal X, Y motions are attained by the movement of the substrate table on the ball lead screw arrangement and vertical Z motion is achieved by the movement of the tool head. Each axis has its motion controlled by an individual stepper motor in open-loop drive with rapid and linear interpolations, such that all 3 axes can be moved simultaneously. Initially, tool head was designed to have the spindle motor and the face-milling cutter to be on the same base plate for their simultaneous movement. Later it was modied as shown in Fig. 14 to have a spline shaft arrangement for the power transfer between the isolated geared motor that was

xed to the frame of the HLM machine and the spindle motor. During the vertical movement of tool head, isolating the spindle motor from its tool head reduces the net load on the stepper motor. Thus, the accuracy and repeatability of the z-axis movement is enhanced (Fig. 14). Heat buildup due to the welding processes results in partial malformation or collapse of the structure. A cooling channel plate has been xed to incorporate effective heat control management. This plate is mounted on the machine table and cold compressed air is circulated through the duct. The substrate is mounted on top of this while the weld deposition occurs. The temperature variation within the deposition layer with the severity of cooling inuences the generation of internal stresses and the resulting microstructure of the deposited layer (Fig. 15). To relieve these undesirable residual stresses, a suitable heat treatment is performed using normalizing and annealing processes. As these residual stresses are unchecked, they may induce warping, loss of edge tolerance and delaminating, thereby reducing the strength and inuence on the tool life. The material homogeneity of the tools obtained with this HLM process is between those of cast and machined parts. Thus, this process is not suitable for making forging dies where very high impact forces are encountered. But the die used in injection molding, die casting and sheet metal forming undergoes considerably less fatigue loading during the operation, so these tools can serve the purpose even without any homogenization operation such as the HIP process. Further, these die halves are free from overhanging features, as they need to open and close in operation. Building such dies and mold with free from re-entrant proles by this novel methodology will not require any support structure, thus making the process more attractive (Table 2).

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Fig. 15. Fabrication of the connecting rod with the HLM process. (a) Deposited Weld Layer for Connecting Rod, (b) Face Milled weld deposited Connecting Rod.

Table 2 Comparison of tool making using laser sintering and HLM process Characteristic Principle Density and strength SLS and 3DP Powder metallurgy (PM) Porous part (without compaction). Since it is not totally steel, not very strong HLM Welding and millingwell-known processes Under stable operating conditions, density close to 100% is possible. Strength depends only on the availability of suitable ller wires which are available in a variety of choices No post processing for density improvement. However, Hot Iso-static Pressing (HIP) improves fatigue strength Same as CNC machining Adaptive and visible slicing is possible. The whole die is a single visible slice Much faster than SLS and 3DP Not hazardous A retrot or complete machine

Post-processing

Impregnation with copper in a furnace is required which takes several hours Limited by particle and layer sizes Only uniform slicing of zeroth-order edge Slower than HLM Hazardous due to use of laser A complete and costly machine

Accuracy Slicing type Overall cycle time Safety Available as

7. Conclusions Direct production of the metal part is unique among current RP techniques. With the proposed and developed HLM process, the overall cycle time of tools and dies can be developed much faster than the current existing commercial RP systems. The HLM process can be developed entirely as a new RP system or even retrot to the existing three-axis CNC machine, thus minimizing the investment cost. Strength of the deposited metal layer depends mainly on the availability of suitable ller wires and all the desired material properties cannot be attained with the welding process. The tools produced using this process may be inferior to their conventional counterparts in composition and tool life period but these will generate the nal products as accurately as any other tool. Flooded with competitors and thronged by customer demands, manufacturing industries nd Direct Metal RP as a golden goose for their new product development.

References
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Further Reading
[31] Gas Metal Arc Welding, Welding Handbook AWS, 1996.