Abstract
Gas metal arc welding-based metal printing is an effective tool to fabricate complex prototypes and tangibles products having enormous advantages such as low cost and minimum lead time for widespread engineering applications in the developed industry. Gas metal arc welding-based metal-deposition was implemented to build three dimensional specimens with varying cross-sections through different paths strategies, that is, spiral-in (circular and square) and raster (square, diagonal and circular). The given trajectory was followed by providing programmed inputs to the controller of the setup to deposit metal layer over the layer for producing a positive slope on the lower half and a negative slope on the upper half section of the deposited object. The fabricated setup can be used to produce sloped objects having 20° inclination. The mechanical properties such as tensile strength, bending strength and microhardness of the deposited 3D parts were investigated to observe the effect of different depositing strategies. Amongst the various deposition strategies adopted to build parts, the raster diagonal (square) and raster linear (circular) showed the maximum value of tensile and bending strength. The microstructural characterization of the deposited parts was also carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
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