Robotic Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing With Variable Height Layers

Robotic wire arc additive manufacturing has been widely adopted due to its high deposition rates and large print volume relative to other metal additive manufacturing processes. For complex geometries, printing with variable height within layers offers the advantage of producing overhangs without the need for support material or geometric decomposition. This approach has been demonstrated for steel using precomputed robot speed profiles to achieve consistent geometric quality. In contrast, aluminum exhibits a bead geometry that is tightly coupled to the temperature of the previous layer, resulting in significant changes to the height of the deposited material at different points in the part. This article presents a closed-loop approach to correcting for variations in the height of the deposited material between layers. We use an IR camera mounted on a separate robot to track the welding flame and estimate the height of deposited material. The robot velocity profile is then updated to account for the error in the previous layer and the nominal planned height profile while factoring in process and system constraints. Implementation of this framework showed significant improvement over the open-loop case and demonstrated robustness to inaccurate model parameters.