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Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is a widespread additive manufacturing technology for metallic-part fabrication; however, final products can contain microstructural defects that reduce fatigue performance. While the effects of gas and keyhole pores are well characterized, other defects, including lack of fusion and smooth facets, warrant additional investigation given their potential to significantly impact fatigue life. Therefore, such defects were intentionally induced into EBM Ti-6Al-4V, a prevalent titanium alloy, to investigate their degradation on stress-controlled fatigue life. The focus offset processing parameter was varied outside of typical manufacturing settings to generate a variety of defect types, and specimens were tested under fatigue loading, followed by surface and microstructure characterization. Fatigue damage primarily initiated at smooth facet sites or sites consisting of un-melted powder due to a lack of fusion, and an increase in both fatigue life and void content with increasing focus offset was noted. This counter-intuitive relationship is attributed to lower focus offsets producing a microstructure more prone to smooth facets, discussed in the literature as being due to lack of fusion or cleavage fracture, and this study indicates that these smooth flaws are most likely a result of lack of fusion. 

This paper describes coordinate system definition and transfer for five-axis machining of additively-manufactured preforms. In this method, a set of fiducials are attached to the temporarily attached to the part, and their location relative to the preform geometry is calibrated using a structured light scanner. Those fiducials can then be measured in the machine tool to determine the location and orientation of the part. The method is demonstrated by finish-machining a carbon fiber layup mold from an additively manufactured Invar preform. In addition to showing the coordinate transfer methods necessary to machine the part, several key challenges with machining additively-manufactured preforms are discussed and potential solutions are proposed. Unfortunately, the final part was ultimately unusable due to porosity inside the part left from the additive process. Future work will remanufacture this part while taking steps to avoid porosity and other challenges encountered. 

When subjected to the lap shear testing, spot welds created by brazing, resistance welding, or other techniques may fail either by a plug failure mode (also called pull-out mode) or an interfacial shear failure mode. In the past, plug failure mode was thought to be depend- ent on base metal ultimate tensile strength, spot diameter and plate thickness, while interfacial failure can be determined by interface shear strength and spot area. No fracture mechanics model or failure process is invoked in such an approach, and its predictive capability is often doubted compared to realistic experiments. This work conducts a parametric study to assess the failure behavior as a function of dominant three-dimensional geometric parameters based on the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) damage mechanics model and no-damage mod- el respectively. Different necking conditions are considered as precursors to the two failure modes in the no-damage model. It is found out that a small ratio of spot diameter to plate thickness promotes interfacial shear failure while a large ratio favors plug failure. Other geometric parameters such as the filler interlayer thickness, if used, play a secondary role. The calculated peak force Fwt is not much different between the GTN and no-damage analyses, and better agreement is shown in the small nugget region. Normalized peak force calculated from the GTN model with the porosity f0 set to 0.01 showed the best agreement with pervious tensile shear tests on spot-welded DP980 lap joints in comparison to that calculated from the GTN model with f0 at 0.02 and the no-damage model. Note that heterogeneous distribution of materi- al strength across the joint region was considered in the GTN model, which was estimated based on the hardness map measured across the joint cross section. 

One of the most difficult aspects of printing large, complex metal parts is building large overhangs without the use of support structures. When using typical gas metal arc welding techniques, the torch is kept aligned with the gravitational direction. It has been shown that the maximum overhang angle that can be achieved is roughly 25°. This maximum can be increased by using part positioner, but this adds extra system complexity, especially for creating the robot paths. It is desirable then to develop a method of printing with the torch in a Non-Gravity Aligned (NGA) direction, such that the weld pool is supported and will produce the desired weld bead. This work focuses on the development of a control scheme based on sensor feedback of the state of the weld pool to maintain a stable, desired weld pool shape and thus print more complex parts using the gas metal arc welding process. 

The purpose of this research is to provide a framework for Large Scale Additive Metals Manufacturing (LSAMM) in arbitrary directions. Traditionally, slicing and path planning is done along the gravity aligned direction of a part, causing more complex geometrical shapes to have unsupported overhangs. The overhangs can be managed using a part positioner or a powder bed process. A different framework for slicing and building parts out of gravity alignment could improve current capabilities of LSAMM processes. The presented research focuses on segmenting more complex geometrical parts into gravity aligned (GA), non-gravity aligned (NGA), and transition segments to help generate toolpaths. Initial research of segment planning for complex geometrical shapes will be presented, as well as current results from builds completed at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville. The completed builds show that more consistent thermal evolution of a part based on the path sequence and torch angle results in successful builds.