The Role of Additive Manufacturing in the Era of Industry 5.0

Abstract

The evolution of industry 5.0 enables the usage of smart machines and intelligent robots with the collaboration of human beings. Digital manufacturing without and with IoT technologies employs digital data for production as in Additive manufacturing (AM). The progressive growth of AM has transformed from prototyping to functional part development. Due to the advent of a less buy-to-fly (BTF) ratio, the manufacturing sector adopted AM technologies for large-scale production. Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is one such technology for fabricating unique functional parts both job-wise, as well as mass production. From the literature and as per the observations made by most of the researchers and industrial practitioners, features like end product surface finish and power consumption need to be studied for better sustainable WAAM products. WAAM is renowned for its potential progressive aspects in diverse fields. The deposition rate of WAAM is relatively high compared to the conventional manufacturing process. WAAM offers excellent dimensional accuracy, less buy to fly ratio, and design freedom over manufacturing. WAAM supports a rich set of materials library ranging from general purpose steels to industrial grade steels, alloys, and even functionally grade materials. It has applications ranging from aerospace, defense, medical applications, electronics, automotive industry, and even in fashion art, and jewelry. As the WAAM emerged into most revenue-generated sectors of the economy it has attained the attention of many researchers along with the manufacturing industry. In the current thesis, the evolution of the WAAM process from gas metal arc welding (GMAW) has been presented. The arc force involved in the WAAM process which affects the dimensional accuracy of the weld bead was studied. The prominent process parameters such as current, wire feed, weld speed, and torch angle significantly influence the build quality of the weld bead.