Fabrication of Ti6Al4V alloy by wire arc additive manufacturing process and comprehensive machinability analysis
Authors :- Singla J.; Kumar N.; Bansal A.; Singla A.K.; Khanna N.
Publication :- Wear (Elsevier), Volumes 576–577, 2025
Ti6Al4V alloy promises to have vide industrial applications owing to high strength, low density, and better resistance to corrosion. In the present study, in the first phase, Ti6Al4V alloy was fabricated by utilizing direct energy deposition techniques namely WAAM-CMT under controlled argon (approx. 99.9 %) environment with an aim to avoid oxidation. The WAAMed Ti6Al4V alloy showed 9.4, 19.14, 122.85, and 16.87 % higher ultimate strength, elongation, toughness, and microhardness, respectively as compared to wrought variant. This implies the suitable selection of WAAM-CMT process parameters along with proper protection under argon environment. Further, to evaluate its machinability, both the conventional and WAAM-CMT developed Ti6Al4V alloys have been subjected to drilling using TiAlN coated carbide twist drill bit under LCO2 environment. The drilling performance parameters like tool wear, power consumption, cutting force, and torque have been assessed. Flank wear, thrust force, and surface roughness were found to be 94.17, 18.4, and 94.2 %. higher in the case of WAAMed alloy as compared to wrought alloy, respectively owing to its better mechanical properties as mentioned above. Due to improved mechanical properties like higher hardness for WAAMed alloy, the drilling tool gets blunt faster and the surface inside the hole becomes rougher with higher surface roughness as compared to the wrought alloy. Further, power consumption and torque seem to be independent of the flank wear with similar slight variations were reported for both the variants. The hole surface was found to be smoother in case of wrought alloy, which may correlate to its minimal surface roughness. Smaller chips were formed during drilling of WAAMed alloy, however, the macro aspects like curled shape seemed to be similar for both variants. Overall, it is recommended that Ti6Al4V components can be fabricated using WAAM-CMT under controlled argon environment.