Methods for 3D Volume Building in Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Cold spraying (CS) has proved as an attractive and rapidly developing solid-state material deposition process that allows for fast formation of high quality, large 3D volume objects. Low risks of undesirable heat effects lead to increased interest in CS-based rapidly additive manufacturing (AM). However, by continuous powder spraying and high-pressure gas operation, cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) in terms of shape building is rather sensitive to operating parameters and imposes high requirements on the control of process conditions and locally needed kinematics. Every step of the manufacturing process therefore needs to be well conceived and planned, especially with regard to the toolpath planning and implementation. This is not only essential to meet basic performance requirements, but also needed to realize the desired accuracy. In order to tackle above needs, the present study presents a new toolpath planning method for 3D volume build-up to improve manufacturing accuracy and flexibility by cold spray additive manufacturing. Applied benchmarking tests prove acceptable shape accuracy and demonstrate that the current method can enhance the capabilities of CSAM for nearnet shape construction. This implies that careful planning and manufacturing strategies should enable to overcome the challenges associated with CSAM.