HDMR technology for the aircraft metal part

Purpose The paper aims to introduce the fabrication of a medium steel aircraft part by hybrid deposition and micro-rolling technology (HDMR) and illustrate its advantages, microstructure features and mechanical properties of the part. Design/methodology/approach The HDMR technology contains two procedures happening almost at the same time: the welding deposition procedure and then the micro-rolling procedure. It takes the gas metal arc welding as the heat source to melt a metal wire and deposit metal in the welding deposition procedure. The metal just deposited is rolled synchronously by a micro roller following the welding torch in micro-rolling procedure almost at the same time layer by layer. The paper presents a contrast of the grain morphology of metal parts produced respectively by HDMR and freedom arc deposition (FAD) and the mechanical properties of metal parts of the same metal from HDMR casting, forging and FAD methods. Findings HDMR breaks the dendrite grain of welding beads into the fine crisscross grains. The mechanical properties of metal parts are improved distinctly by the micro-rolling procedure compared to casting, forging and FAD. Practical implications In addition, the application of HDMR technology has succeeded in the fabrication of an eligible aircraft metal part, which is quite difficult to achieve using other additive manufacturing (AM) or casting technologies. Originality/value HDMR has the advantage of equiponderance manufacturing by micro-rolling compared to other AM technologies. The metal part fabricated by HDMR technology obtains the fine crisscross grains and brings hope for AM metal components with excellent mechanical properties for aircraft applications.