Process planning for robotic wire ARC additive manufacturing

Robotic Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) refers to a class of additive manufacturing processes that builds parts from 3D CAD models by joining materials layerupon- layer, as opposed to conventional subtractive manufacturing technologies. Over the past half century, a significant amount of work has been done to develop the capability to produce parts from weld deposits through the additive approach. However, a fully automated CAD-topart additive manufacturing (AM) system that incorporates an arc welding process has yet to be developed. The missing link is an automated process planning methodology that can generate robotic welding paths directly from CAD models based on various process models. The development of such a highly integrated process planning method for WAAM is the focus of this thesis.