Architecture, design and implementation of CAM software for Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing

This PhD thesis deals with the automatic deposition toolpath generation for WAAM (Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing). WAAM is an Additive Manufacturing technology for metal components that uses an electric arc to melt a continuosly fed wire thus depositing a bead on a metal plate. It is a very primising technology since it is suitable to build parts large up to meters with an high deposition rate. However, automatic software to calculate the deposition toolpath for a part taking the CAD model as input is not easily available. Therefore, the PhD activity focused on the development of toolpath calculation algorithms for the generation of both three and five axes deposition toolpath. Moreover, the design and construction processes of a five axis machine to test the deposition toolpaths is presented together with a device able to reconstruct the geometry of the deposited material during the deposition phase that in the future could be used to obtain a numerical control with a closed loop approach able to automatically correct the deposition defects.