Research of novel oscillating wire feeding system using the AC servo motor

With the background of the control of additional mechanical force droplet transfer in MIG/MAG welding, regarding the AC servo motor as core, a novel oscillating wire feeding system has been developed with excellent performances of control and dynamic acceleration which is tested. System constitution and operation principle are introduced in this paper. Influences of parameters on dynamic acceleration performance are analyzed and discussed emphatically, such as oscillating frequency, oscillating amplitude and draw-back speed. Experimental result indicates that according to the technique of welding control, the novel wire feeding system responds rapidly to various kinds of control orders of wire feeding and draw-back, and realizes flexible control of welding wire axial movement, including dynamic shifting,oscillating and so on.

Development of a welding system for 3D steel rapid prototyping process

Metal device rapid prototyping with welding is one of the research interests at present. A controlled inertial droplet transfer MAG welding (CIDTMAGW) process was developed for the 3D steel device rapid prototyping with metal deposition. In this process, by using a special designed wire feeder, a controlled inertia is imposed on the droplet formed on the wire tip and combines with the arc force to make it detached. Thus, according to the requirements of rapid prototyping, the arc heat and the droplet detaching force can be separately controlled to attain a stable and satisfactory metal deposition process. A CIDTMAGW system and a testing manipulator for the 3D steel device rapid prototyping are presented. The required software is completed as well. The experiments proved that the geometric formation of the rapid prototyping device with welding deposition is well agreed the data of the device CAD modeling. The surface of the deposited device is comparatively smooth.

Analysis of metal transfer during electron beam welding with filler wire

The metal transfer mode of electron beam welding （EBW） with filler wire was studied experimentally. The spatial position between the electron beam and the filler wire was defined. Basing on the charge coupled device （CCD） visual sensing system, the metal transfer mode of filler wire was investigated. The results showed that there were five transfer modes during EBW process due to different wire feed rates and spatial positions between beam and filler wire, such as short-circuiting mode, molten metal bridge mode, small droplet mode, big droplet mode and mixed mode. By comparing the weld appearance of different transfer modes, the molten metal bridge transfer was proved to be the best transfer mode.

The control of welding wire feed self-adaptive mechanism based on fuzzy PID

The welding wire feed mechanism is an important component of welding equipment, both reliability and stabilization are the premise that the welding quality can be ensured. The PID is currently adapted to control the welding wire feed mechanism, although the fuzzy PID has advantage of fast response and adaptation, the precision of fuzzy PID is lower. Accordingly, the fuzzy self-adaptive PID controller was proposed through changing fuzzy input variables and output variables based on variable universe, simple furwtion is adopted as scaling factor, the fuzzy PID controller parameters are adjusted to improve the precision and adjustment range. Simulation results show that control effects of fuzzy self-adaptive PID adopted by the welding wire feed mechanism have good adaptive ability and robustness based on variable universe, the welding experiments indicate that the welding quality met the requirements actually.

Self-Adaptive Control System for Additive Manufacturing Using Double Electrode Micro Plasma Arc Welding

Wire arc additive manufacturing(WAAM)has been investigated to deposit large-scale metal parts due to its high deposition efficiency and low material cost.However,in the process of automatically manufacturing the high-quality metal parts by WAAM,several problems about the heat build-up,the deposit-path optimization,and the stability of the process parameters need to be well addressed.To overcome these issues,a new WAAM method based on the double electrode micro plasma arc welding(DE-MPAW)was designed.The circuit principles of different metal-transfer models in the DE-MPAW deposition process were analyzed theoretically.The effects between the parameters,wire feed rate and torch stand-off distance,in the process of WAAM were investigated experimentally.In addition,a real-time DE-MPAW control system was developed to optimize and stabilize the deposition process by self-adaptively changing the wire feed rate and torch stand-off distance.Finally,a series of tests were performed to evaluate the control system’s performance.The results show that the capability against interferences in the process of WAAM has been enhanced by this self-adaptive adjustment system.Further,the deposition paths about the metal part’s layer heights in WAAM are simplified.Finally,the appearance of the WAAM-deposited metal layers is also improved with the use of the control system.

The validating and identifying of the droplet transfer character signal from arc light in oscillating wire feed mode

The character of droplet transfer arc light sense signal is studied and validated in oscillating feed mode. And a novel mini photoelectric arc light sensor together with the controlling circuit used to automatically stabilize the signal range is developed. Further more the automatically identifying of the droplet transfer character signal from arc light is realized reliably.

The alternate wire-feed control in the automatic CO_2 arc welding

In the automatic CO_2 arc welding, the alteration of the vertical distance between the welding torch and the workpiece has a strong effect on the welding parameters such as welding current and voltage, with the result that the appearance and quality of weld are not steady. To weaken the influence of the distance alteration, a method is put forward in the paper. The method is that the alternate wire-feed control is used for compensating the welding current. On the basis of theoretical analysis, a static numerical model for alternate wire-feed control is established. The experiments show that the model-based regulation of the wire feed rate can compensate the welding current and ensure the appearance of weld. When the alteration of vertical distance between the torch and the workpiece is greater, not only is the wire feed rate regulated, but the output voltage of the power source is adjusted to ensure the appearance and quality of weld.

Fine equiaxed β grains and superior tensile property in Ti-6Al-4V alloy deposited by coaxial electron beam wire feeding additive manufacturing

Coarse columnar β grains result in anisotropic mechanical properties in Ti alloys deposited by additive manufacturing. This study reports that Ti-6Al-4V alloy fabricated by coaxial electron beam wire feeding additive manufacturing presents a weak anisotropy, high strength and ductility. The superior tensile property arises from a microstructure with fine equiaxed β grains(EGβ), discontinuous grain boundary α phase and short intragranular α lamellae. A large region of fine EGβ arises from a special combination of the temperature gradient and solidification rate, and attractive α morphology is caused by solid phase transformations during interpass thermal cycling and post heat treatments.