A Parametric Study of Additive Manufacturing Process: TA6V Laser Wire Metal Deposition

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing has proven to be an economically and industrially attractive process in building or repairing parts. However, the major issue of this new process is to guarantee a mechanical behavior identical to the subtractive manufacturing methodologies. The work, presented in this paper, is centered on the Laser Wire Metal Deposition (LMD-w) method with the metallic alloy TA6V. Its working principle is to fuse a coaxial wire on a substrate with a laser as a heat source. To better understand the interaction between the input parameters (Laser Power, Wire Feed Speed and Tool Speed) and the clad geometry output variables (Height, Width and Contact Angle) and the substrate displacement, we have realized an experimentation. We printed 9 clads according Taguchi’s experimental design. Pearson correlation coefficient and Fisher test performed on the experimental measures showed as main result: Tool Speed is the parameter with the most significant influence on the output variables.