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Abstract The solidification microstructures of plain and inoculated 6061 aluminum builds manufactured with gas metal arc-directed energy deposition were studied with a combination of models and experiments. Electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD) showed that the plain 6061 build had large, columnar grains with intergranular solidification cracking, while the inoculated build had a near-equiaxed, fine grain microstructure with no solidification cracks. By combining EBSD and energy dispersive spectrometry, the inoculated build has been shown to have exhibited globular growth while the non-inoculated build displayed a dendritic microstructure. A combination of heat transfer and modified grain morphology models were employed to predict the solidification morphology of the 6061 builds, which closely matched experimental results. A modification is proposed to the criterion marking the transition from globular to dendritic growth that better matches experimental results in this work. The results of this study are expected to provide improved methods to predict solidification microstructure for the development of new materials and processing parameters for additive manufacturing.