Development Of Metal Surfacing Machine Based On Metal Powder Support

Rapid Prototyping(RP)technology is one major research achievement in processing and manufacturing industry and the metal rapid prototyping technology is also the hot spot of RP technology and research.The parts formed by 3D build-up welding technology with arc as the heat source has high density and good mechanical properties.Meanwhile,the combination with mature welding process is able to ensure the forming quality while reducing the equipment cost,so it has good development prospect.In this paper,development is made based on original equipment and one build-up welding forming machine is designed.Powder spreading function is added,the hardware of the mechanical system and control system of the build-up welding forming equipment is designed and built and the auxiliary software is developed.Build-up welding test is done on the equipment.Build-up welding forming for metal parts based on metal powder support is provided in this paper,whose basic principle is the combination between welding forming technology and RP technology.The main method is to take the welding wire as the forming material and the metal powder as the support material which supports the components of cantilever construction and thus it is able to realize the build-up welding RP.The mechanical structure of the self-developed build-up forming machine mainly includes: 3D movement mechanism,the new powder spreading module,powder feeding module and powder recycling module.The main modules are designed and built,the working principle of each module is introduced and finite element analysis is made for key components.The solution of IPC + motion controller usually used by digital control system is adopted for the equipment control system,and modular design method is adopted to shorten the development cycle.The control system performance is stable and reliable.The design of test software for surfacing control system has been completed.The auxiliary control software for this equipment is developed with Delphi.The software system covers such three main function modules as point to point control module,state inspection module and wave shape display module.The software is reliable in performance and complete in structure.After the equipment mechanical system,control system and software system are designed and built,the system commissioning is conducted with good results.The translational velocity of the scraper and the rotation speed of the powder feeding roll are determined through the experiment.Single-pass multi-layer test and multi-pass single-layer forming test are designed and the test phenomena and results are analyzed.Finally,the forming test of components of cantilever construction is performed to verify the feasibility of the build-up welding equipment.