Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Mechanical Engineering

Major Professor

Bradley H. Jared

Committee Members

Chad Duty, Brett Compton

Abstract

Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is an advanced manufacturing alternative to subtractive manufacturing techniques which allows companies to save time, money, and material. Aluminum 6061 is a widely used engineering material due to its strength and corrosion resistance. It is prone to hot cracking, however, when deposited through a WAAM process. Fortius Metals developed a 6061 reactive additive manufacturing (RAM) 2 wire that provides an inoculant-based solution to mitigate hot cracking and material deposition. Work will be described which has explored the WAAM processes for Al 6061 RAM2 wire. Deposition was tested with different weave types, heat inputs, and travel speeds. One hundred percent argon was used for shielding gas. Then those materials were compared to as-printed material tensile values provided by Fortius Metals. Tensile testing was completed and used ASTM E8 standards for samples. The process started with base layer testing, then moved to build layers. The build layers were used to create single-pass walls and a diamond geometry to gather material for testing. Brief multi-pass experimentation was completed successfully with a proposed larger geometry to be built in the future. Mechanical properties testing proved the material had a ultimate tensile strength of 145.4 MPa and a yield strength of 79.7 MPa. Both values are within 10 MPa of the values provided by Fortius. Porosity was a prevalent issue in the resulting deposits and tested pieces. Different steps were taken to mitigate the issues. Parameter changes, trailing gas and baking the wire were all tested but proved to make no difference in the porosity levels. New wire provided by Fortius eliminated most of the porosity. Final parameters chosen for the base layer was a wire feed speed of 350 in/min, a 10 in/min travel speed, a two mm triangle weave and a pulse welding process. The build layer parameters were a wire feed speed of 260 in/min, a travel speed of 12 in/min, a 2.5 mm triangle weave using a CMT process. These parameters allowed for successful wall and part printing. Future work is to complete a large multi-pass geometry of a power-T and to extract more tensile bars and samples for mechanical and microstructural testing.

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