Forming characteristics of thin-wall steel parts by double electrode GMAW based additive manufacturing

A novel additive manufacturing (AM) system using double electrode gas metal arc welding (DE-GMAW) was developed to fabricate metallic products. The width of the deposited multi-layer parts decreased with the increasing of the bypass current and the deposited height increased in proportion to the bypass current under the same deposition rate. The height difference between arc striking point and arc extinguishing point in the deposited parts was reduced by the bypass arc. The coefficient of materials utilization increased more than 10% using DE-GMAW for depositing thin-wall parts within a certain range of bypass current. The DE-GMAW based AM shows promise to fabricate narrower thin-wall components with high deposition rate and has higher deposition efficiency, compared with the normal GMAW based AM.