Welding Based Additive Manufacturing: Fundamentals

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has drawn abundant attention over the past decades in the manufacturing and fabrication industries, especially to make part models and prototypes. This chapter introduces a potential welding based AM process called Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) for the fabrication of near-net shaped metal components including stainless steel components. To start with traditional AM processes, various fundamental traditional AM for the fabrication of components have been presented. Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) has been explained with its variants, synonyms, different welding processes to suit WAAM particularly to weld stainless steel metal; primary process selections for working with WAAM, important metals, and alloys that could be used in WAAM have been elaborated. A case study for WAAM fabrication of AISI 316 L stainless steel plate is included to introduce the fabrication of metal components using WAAM. Further, the most common defects which possibly play a vital role in WAAM components fabrication and a few of the future challenges regarding WAAM development are discussed. Fundamental information covered in this chapter could be more beneficial to beginners for the understanding of WAAM process generally including stainless steel component fabrication in a lucid tactic.