Many heavy industrial applications, e.g. shipbuilding and offshore, rely on thick-section, high-quality welds. Unfortunately, traditional arc-based techniques are often found wanting due to a limited penetration depth and excessive heat-affected zone. The former is typically solved by having a wide groove filled by multiple weld passes, which is both costly and time consuming. Other processes such as autonomous laser or electron beams can join thick materials, but have disadvantages such as increased hardness and solidification cracks inside the welds. A promising in-between technique to join thick sheets is narrow gap multi layer laser welding (NGMLW), using less filler material while also offering more control of weld properties. This technique is often used with laser scanning optics and cold wire, or a defocused laser and electrically heated wire. This paper investigates the limitations of the latter during NGMLW, mainly using high-speed imaging to directly observe and explain process behavior. Increased deposition rates are wanted, but heating also consequently needs to be increased for proper bead fusion. Arc occurrences are found to be the cause of instabilities. They are observed occasionally even at low voltages, but more frequently at higher outputs, and then are also more disruptive to the process.

There are great prospects for utilizing multipass laser hot-wire welding to join thick steel sheets, especially for techniques commonly performed in single passes, e.g., laser arc hybrid welding, fall short, presenting great opportunities for vehicle industries and offshore applications. Many modern approaches for applying these techniques rely on customized wire feeding nozzles or special scanner optics to ensure proper laser–wire interactions and, in turn, robust process behavior, making them less accessible to many industries. Here, we present a modified adaption of laser hot-wire welding, utilizing more readily available equipment, including an unmodified welding source and a nozzle, presented and evaluated through means of, e.g., high speed imaging and macroscopy. This technique was found to have high process robustness, especially for sealing passes, if wire resistance heating is kept within suitable levels. It is able to both maintain proper laser–wire interaction and produce close to net-shape weld caps. Also, recommended process parameters are presented, together with a description of a potential method for suppressing solidification cracking.

A novel, near-vertical approach to the usually horizontal laser Narrow Gap Multi-Layer Welding process is introduced. The process is applied to join X100 pipeline steel and studied through High Speed Imaging. The produced welded joints are compared to their horizontally welded counterparts using 3D scanning, longitudinal & perpendicular cross sections and Computed Tomography analysis. The near-vertical approach is found to be robust and produce welded joints with a uniform appearance. The top surface exhibits certain reoccurring morphological features, and variations in internal track melting boundaries are observed. Any observed cavities appear similar to those produced using the horizontal process, with the difference of their orientation. A combination of the horizontal and the near-vertical process could be beneficial; the near-vertical approach offers potential for shorter inter-layer time and the horizontal method for better surface finish than that of its counterpart. Potential benefits of, and improvements to, the near-vertical process are discussed.

Additive manufacturing (AM) can be used for the fabrication of large metal parts, e.g., aerospace/space applications. Wire arc additivemanufacturing (WAAM) can be a suitable process for this due to its high deposition rates and relatively low equipment and operationcosts. In WAAM, an electrical arc is used as a heat source and the material is supplied in the form of a metal wire. A known disadvantageof the process is the comparably low dimensional accuracy. This is usually compensated by generating larger structures than desired andmachining away excess materials. So far, using combinations of arc in atmospheric conditions with high precision laser heat sources forAM has not yet been widely researched. Properties of the comparable cheap arc-based process, such as melt pool stability and dimensionalaccuracy, can be improved with the addition of a laser source. Within this paper, impacts of adding a laser beam to the WAAMprocess are presented. Differences between having the beam in a leading or a trailing position, relative to the wire and arc, are alsorevealed. Structures generated using the arc-laser-hybrid processes are compared to ones made using only an arc as the heat source. Bothgeometrical and material aspects are studied to determine the influences of laser hybridization, applied techniques including x ray,energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and high precision 3D scanning. A trailing laser beam is found to best improve topological capabilitiesof WAAM. Having a leading laser beam, on the other hand, is shown to affect cold metal transfer synergy behavior, promotinghigher deposition rates but decreasing topological accuracy.

Purpose

The steadily growing popularity of additive manufacturing (AM) increases the demand for understanding fundamental behaviors of these processes. High-speed imaging (HSI) can be a useful tool to observe these behaviors, but many studies only present qualitative analysis. The purpose of this paper is to propose an algorithm-assisted method as an intermediate to rapidly quantify data from HSI. Here, the method is used to study melt pool surface profile movement in a cold metal transfer-based (CMT-based) AM process, and how it changes when the process is augmented with a laser beam.

Design/methodology/approach

Single-track wide walls are generated in multiple layers using only CMT, CMT with leading and with trailing laser beam while observing the processes using HSI. The studied features are manually traced in multiple HSI frames. Algorithms are then used for sorting measurement points and generating feature curves for easier comparison.

Findings

Using this method, it is found that the fluctuation of the melt surface in the chosen CMT AM process can be reduced by more than 35 per cent with the addition of a laser beam trailing behind the arc. This indicates that arc and laser can be a viable combination for AM.

Originality/value

The suggested quantification method was used successfully for the laser-arc hybrid process and can also be applied for studies of many other AM processes where HSI is implemented. This can help fortify and expand the understanding of many phenomena in AM that were previously too difficult to measure.