High-power wire arc additive manufacturing of stainless steel with active heat management

Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process is widely used in large steel components. However, WAAM severe heat accumulation reduced the accuracy of the products, its microstructure and mechanical properties also deteriorate. Compared with common steel, it is more difficult to get complicated stainless steel components with WAAM due to its weak heat dispersion. To efficiently mitigate the heat accumulation, this paper presented a water-medium active cooling additive manufacturing system to complete a 304 stainless steel thin-walled structure. As a result, taller and narrower thin-walled parts could be gotten with 7% increase in average height and 13% decrease in average width. Simultaneously, the surface waviness is reduced, grains are refined and fracture properties of thin-walled parts are improved.