Journal of Materials Processing Tech.

269 (2019) 109–116

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Tech.

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Wire arc additive manufacturing of hot work tool steel with CMT process T
Y. Ali , P. Henckell, J. Hildebrand, J. Reimann, J.P. Bergmann, S. Barnikol-Oettler
⁎

Technische Universität Ilmenau, Department of Production Technology, Germany

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Associate editor: C.H. Caceres This study presents investigations on the additive manufacturing of hot work steel with the energy-reduced gas
Keywords: metal arc welding (GMAW) process, which is a cold metal transfer (CMT) process. The paper analyses the
Additive manufacturing influence of arc energy and the thermal field on the resulting mechanical properties and microstructure of the
WAAM material. The investigations were carried out with hot work tool steel X37CrMoV 5-1, which is used for the
GMAW manufacturing of plastic moulds, hot extrusion dies, and forging dies. The results show that this steel can be used
CMT to generate 3D metal components or structures with high reproducibility, near-net-shaped geometry, absence of
Hot work steel cracks, and a deposition rate of up to 3.6 kg/h. The variation of the wire feed speed and the welding speed
DED
enables the production of weld beads of width up to 9.4 mm. The mechanical properties of the generated
X37CrMoV 5-1
structures can be adapted by the dominant thermal field, which in turn is influenced by the bypass temperature
and the electric arc energy. A determining factor to describe the main variables of the welding process is re-
presented by energy per unit length EL. If the bypass temperature is above the martensite start temperature (Ms),
there is a homogeneous hardness level along the height of the additively manufactured structure height as long
as the energy produced by the welding arc is enough to keep the temperature of all layers above Ms.

1. Introduction
The resource-efficient production of complex and highly customized
3D parts is limited to conventional manufacturing methods due to the
need of expensive tools or casting moulds. For this reason, additive
manufacturing processes have been increasingly investigated (Huang
et al., 2013). The development of additive manufacturing processes
based on CAD models started in 1980 for the production of prototypes
(Ashley, 1991). After that, many processes based on the fabrication of
plastics, wax, metals, and ceramics were developed for the manufacture
of the complex 3D components. An overview of the principle of rapid
prototyping and the main additive manufacturing processes is pre-
sented by Wong and Hernandez (2012).
Frazier (2014) presents a review on the state of the art of additive
manufacturing processes for metal parts. These processes are divided
into three main categories: powder bed systems, powder feed systems,
and wire feed systems. Vayre et al. (2012) present the additive manu-
facturing processes of powder bed systems with laser and electron beam
and compare their properties in terms of quality, dimensions, available
materials, and costs. Gu et al. (2012) list the multicomponent mate-
rials/alloys processed by laser-based additive manufacturing processes
in powder bed systems. According to these studies, laser-based systems
are the most common technologies for the additive manufacturing of
metallic parts due to the large number of offered and commercially
available systems in the industry (Bergmann et al., 2018). The laser
systems are popular because of the possibility of building metallic parts
with high complexity and thin walls in the micrometre range (Gebhardt
et al., 2010). Therefore, the main application of powder bed systems is
the production of small complex components (Wu, 2007), but it is not
economical to generate large-scale metal parts due to the limited
building volume and the low build-up rates. In this case, powder and
wire feed systems are more applicable. Arcella and Froes (2000) present
an additive manufacturing system with 19 kW CO2 laser and powder
feeding to build titanium aerospace components with high deposition
rates of up to 4.5 kg/h and large volumes (up to 2.5 × 1 × 1 m3). Ma
et al. (2013) used a similar system with 5 kW CO2 laser to fabricate
large-scale metal parts with stainless steel. NASA developed a wire feed
system based on electron beam, known as electron beam freeform
fabrication (EBF3), to produce aerospace components in vacuum. The
fabrication of large 3D components of aluminium and titanium alloys
with a deposition rate of up to 2 kg/h could be enabled by the use of a
24 kW electron beam gun and six-axis positioning system with build
envelope of 1.5 × 0.6 × 1.2 m3 (Taminger and Hafley, 2006).
Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) has increasingly shown
the potential of arc-based processes for the additive manufacturing of
large metallic components (Williams et al., 2016). These processes have

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yarop.ali@tu-ilmenau.de (Y. Ali).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2019.01.034
Received 17 July 2018; Received in revised form 24 January 2019; Accepted 28 January 2019
Available online 29 January 2019
0924-0136/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y. Ali, et al.
the advantage of offering low system costs and decreased material costs
of wire in comparison to powder (by a factor between 2 and 5). Fur-
thermore, high deposition rates in the range of kg/h address additional
business cases (Mehnen et al., 2011). WAAM represents a cost-effective
solution to produce large components made of expensive material (e.g.
Ti- and Ni-alloys), which are used in the aerospace industry, for ex-
ample. Several investigations were carried out to study the feasibility of
producing components of Ti-alloys (Baufeld et al., 2010) and Ni-alloys
(Baufeld, 2012a; 2012b) with the tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding
process. The main focus was the characterization of mechanical prop-
erties (Baufeld and Van der Biest, 2009) and microstructure (Baufeld
et al., 2011). In correlation to the process parameters, the properties
and microstructure resembled the cast materials. These investigations
show that the microstructure of the deposited material and the me-
chanical properties are anisotropic (Baufeld, 2012a; 2012b). Wang
et al. (2013) confirm the results obtained by Baufeld, (2012a); (2012b)
for the investigated Ti-alloy. Further research was carried out to im-
prove the properties of the additive manufactured Ti-6Al-4 V alloy and
eliminate the adverse anisotropic microstructures. Homogeneous
properties and fine-grained microstructure can be achieved by the ad-
dition of boron (up to 0.13 wt. %) to the alloy (Bermingham et al.,
2015).
Additive manufacturing with processes like TIG and plasma welding
requires external wire-feeding systems, which must be fed during the
deposition process from the same direction. Thus, either a welding
torch or a substrate has to be set in relative movement, leading to
complicated path planning (Williams et al., 2016). Opderbecke and
Guiheux (2006) tried to overcome this problem by developing a new
TIG torch (TOPTIG) with steep wire-feeding. This wire has an angle of
20° from the electrode and is melted by the arc energy. Tabernero et al.
(2018) confirm the homogeneous weld formation in the additive
manufacturing regardless of welding direction, but with low deposition
rate (up to 1.5 kg/h). In the gas metal arc welding (GMAW) process,
however, the welding wire is the consumable electrode and is fed
coaxially from the welding torch. This simplifies the tool path pro-
gramming for the manufacture of complex components and structures.
GMAW processes allow higher deposition rate compared to TIG and
laser-based processes. The further development of modified GMAW
welding processes—called energy-reduced short-circuiting transfer
processes such as cold metal transfer (CMT) by Fronius as presented by
Bruckner and Himmelbauer (2005), or ColdArc by EWM as described
by Goecke (2005)—has enabled welding methods with low heat input
and less spatter (Wilden et al., 2006). The advantages of these processes
have improved arc-based additive manufacturing of large-scale com-
ponents. Various researchers have studied the effect of process para-
meters on the geometry of deposited structures with materials such as
aluminium alloys (Gomez Ortega et al., 2017), mild steel (Kazanas
et al., 2012), nickel alloys (Clark et al., 2008), titanium alloys (Zhang
et al., 2017), stainless steel (Hartke et al., 2014), duplex steel (Posch
et al., 2017), and composite materials (Ali et al., 2016). Almeida and
Williams (2010) studied the different processes for multi-layered de-
position of Ti6Al4V. Henckell et al., (2018) investigated the strategies
for additive manufacturing of low-cost 3D compound structures with
mild steel and wear resistance material. The combination of additive
and subtractive methods in hybrid-layer manufacturing to produce net-
shaped 3D parts with GMAW process and subsequent milling process at
the same station was investigated by Song et al. (2005). This combi-
nation aims to save time and costs by reducing the programming and
set-up time (Akula and Karunakaran, 2006). This requires customized
software, which creates the depositing program to build the metal ob-
ject and the milling program to finish the part to its final dimensions
(Karunakaran et al., 2010). The mechanical properties of the metallic
parts built with hybrid-layered manufacturing were analysed by
Suryakumar et al. (2013). The results show a negligible variation in the
hardness and tensile strength in all directions. This variation depends
on the number of thermal cycles, affecting the deposited layer during
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Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 269 (2019) 109–116
the building process. The effect of gas cooling during WAAM on the
mechanical properties and microstructure was investigated with dif-
ferent gas types by Henckell et al. (2017). It was reported that gas
cooling reduces the bypass temperature and increases the build-up rate,
leading to a more efficient AM process. The cooling rates of the set
layers were increased, resulting in a fine-grained microstructure.
The deployment of additive manufacturing to the processing of tool
steel is increasingly gaining importance in industrial use, because of the
ability to produce 3D parts with high complexity (e.g. integrated
cooling channels) and adapted mechanical properties such as high level
of hardness or wear resistance, which cannot be produced by conven-
tional manufacturing methods. In this field, mainly laser- and electron-
beam-based processes have been investigated. Over (2003) describes
the development of a process control method, which enables crack-free
and low-distortion processing of X38CrMoV5-1 (1.2343) and Ti6Al4V
with selective laser melting (SLM) process. Through the development of
a preheating unit and its integration into the system, the residual
stresses and the distortion could be reduced without influencing the
resulting microstructure, which mainly consists of martensite and car-
bides. Cormier et al. (2004) studied the microstructure and mechanical
properties of hot work tool steel 1.2344 produced by electron beam
melting. They report that an increased build-up speed leads to a de-
crease in the mechanical properties. Feuerhahn et al. (2013) success-
fully processed cold work tool steel X110CrMoVAl 8-2 with SLM pro-
cess. The samples were free of cracks and defects and also had a
homogeneous and fine microstructure with high level of hardness;
however, small pores were detected in the samples. Müller et al. (2011)
carried out a study to repair casting dies by graded coating with laser
powder cladding. By combining two materials—Marlok (Fe-Ni-Co
alloy) and Diever (similar to 1.2343)—the properties of the two ma-
terials could be used to achieve graded layers with high toughness, high
hardness, and heat resistance. Pinkerton and Li (2005) investigated the
additive manufacturing of hot work tool steel H13 (1.2344) by means of
laser-directed energy deposition (LDED) and compared the effect of the
less expensive water-atomized powder and the industrially used gas-
atomized powder on the bead geometry, the mechanical properties, and
the microstructure. Klocke et al. (2010) studied the additive manu-
facturing of hot work tool steel 1.2343 using a wire-based laser system
with integrated scanner. They report that the weld bead width can be
increased by increasing the scanner oscillation. Imran et al. (2015)
carried out a study of additive manufacturing of H13 steel on copper
substrate with the LDED process. Through the investigation of the effect
of process parameters (laser power, laser feed rate, spot size, and
powder flow rate) on the mechanical properties and microstructure of
the deposited materials, a set of parameters was determined to produce
high quality bi-metallic structures. So far, there has been no publication
of investigations to fabricate tool steel with arc-based additive manu-
facturing processes.
This study investigates the deployment of WAAM as a cost-effective
and highly productive method for the fabrication of large-scale 3D parts
of hot work tool steel. It further looks into the effect of differing process
parameters on the thermal field, along with the effect of various bypass
temperatures on the resulting near net shape, mechanical properties,
and microstructure of the deposited structures. The fundamental find-
ings of this study can support the production of large-scale 3D com-
ponents of hot work tool steel for application in forming dies or plastic
moulds with predictable properties.
2. Experimental procedure
2.1. Experimental setup
Fig. 1 shows the experimental set-up for the investigations in this
study. The handling system is a six-axis KUKA industrial robot KR 150-
2, which provides a reproducible movement of the welding torch with
an accuracy of ± 0.06 mm. The ‘Fronius CMT Advanced 4000′ with
Y. Ali, et al. Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 269 (2019) 109–116

Table 3
Welding parameters for the main tests.
Varied parameter

Parameter set PS1 PS2 PS3

Wire feed speed 4 m/min 13 m/min 10 m/min

Welding speed 0.7 m/min 0.9 m/min 0.3 m/min
Arc energy per unit length 0.95 kJ/cm 2.2 kJ/cm 5.5 kJ/cm
Bypass Temperature 100 – 200 – 300 – 400 – 500 – 600 °C

which were examined with varied bypass temperatures of 100–600 °C

Fig. 1. Experimental system of WAAM.
in steps of 100 °C. The welding parameters of the main tests are de-
scribed in Table 3 in detail. With these parameters, wall structures with
dimensions of 100 mm × 20 mm (length × height) were generated. To
Table 1
balance the geometry of seam beginning and seam end, the end point of
Chemical composition of the welding wire (producer data sheet).
each weld bead was used as the starting point of the next weld bead.
Alloying Element C Si Mn Cr Mo V Fe
2.2. Evaluation methods
wt. % 0.38 1.0 0.4 5.0 1.1 0.45 balance

For evaluating the actual welding parameters, the values of welding

CMT welding process is used as a welding power supply. The welding
wire is fed to the welding torch by a four-roll drive system. The me-
chanical movements of the welding wire in two directions (forward and
backward) during welding with CMT process are achieved by a push-
pull two-roll drive system in the welding torch.
The experimental trials were carried out on fixed substrate plates of
S355 low-carbon steel plates with dimensions of 200 × 50 × 20 mm3.
To ensure the elimination of the oxide layer and impurities, the surface
of the plates was milled and cleaned with isopropanol. To obtain a
better heat dissipation and reduce waiting time between the layers, a
cooling plate was placed under the base plate to maintain a constant
temperature of 17 °C A coppered solid wire of hot work tool steel
1.2343 (37CrMoV 5-1) with a diameter of 1.0 mm was used as welding
wire, the chemical composition of which is listed in Table 1. In the
experimental trials, a shielding gas with 18% CO2 and 82% Ar (M21)
was used, as recommended by the wire manufacturers.
The investigations in this study are built on pre-tests and main tests.
The welding parameters used in the pre-tests are listed in Table 2. The
pre-tests had the main objectives of evaluating the process and welding
characteristics in order to locate process limits. This was achieved using
100mm-long weld beads with different wire-feeding and welding
speeds. In order to examine whether all parameters are suitable for
additive manufacturing, four layers with the same welding parameters
were generated. For the pre-tests, the bypass temperature was de-
termined to be at room temperature (approx. 25 °C).
After concluding the pre-tests, the correlation between the welding
parameters and the weld bead geometry was determined and the pro-
cess limits defined. In order to confirm the pre-test results, three wall
structures were generated with height of 23 mm with the welding
parameter given in Table 3 and a bypass temperature of 25 °C.
The main tests involved the examination of the influence of the
bypass temperature and the energy per unit length (EL) on the me-
chanical properties and on the microstructure. For this purpose, three
welding parameter sets with differing arc energy levels were chosen,
current, voltage, and wire feed speed were measured during the process
using the data acquisition (DAQ) system Dewetron DEWE PCI16. In
order to obtain a detailed waveform, the scanning rate was set to
10 kHz for current and voltage and 3 kHz for wire feed speed. The wire
feed speed was measured at the main drive system but not at the
welding torch, due to which the forward and backward movements of
the welding wire during the welding process were not recorded. The
measured values of welding current and voltage were used to calculate
the arc power (Formula 1).
n ti + 1
Ui I dt
P=
i=0 ti i
(kW)
(tn t 0)* 1000 (1)
Here, Ui is the actual welding voltage at the time ti in [V], Ii is the
actual welding current at the time ti in [A], and (tn-t0) is the welding
time in [s], which is used to calculate the welding power. For re-
presenting the energy generated during the welding process, the energy
per unit length EL was calculated (Formula 2).
EL = 60*P /100*v (kJ/cm) (2)
Here, P is the welding power in [kW] and v is the welding speed in [m/
min].
The main tests did not enable the measurement of the bypass tem-
perature with a thermocouple due to the rapid cooling of the welds.
Therefore, a thermography camera ImageIR® 8300 by Infratec with a
measuring range of −10 to 1200 °C and thermal resolution of 0.02 K
was used for the investigations. This camera is calibrated through the
comparison of temperatures with a thermocouple and provided with
filters for various temperature ranges, which permits the precise tem-
perature measurement of object surfaces.
The welded structures were metallurgically analysed in order to
study the effect of energy input (EL) and bypass temperature on the
mechanical properties and the microstructure. For this purpose, in the
middle of every generated wall structure, cross-sections were extracted
and metallographically prepared. The specimens were mounted,
grinded with SiC papers from P280 to P2500, and polished with

Table 2
Welding parameters for the pre-tests.
Fixed parameters Varied parameters

Shielding gas M21 (Ar + 18 % Co2) Wire feed speed 4 – 7 – 10 and 13 m/min
Gas flow rate 15 l/min Welding speed 0.3 – 0.5 – 0.7 and 0.9 m/min
Stick-out 12 mm

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Y. Ali, et al.
diamond suspension using grain sizes of 6μ, 3μ, and 1μ. After polishing,
the hardness was investigated to examine the homogeneity of the layer-
by-layer welded structure. The Vickers hardness tests were carried out
by Struers DuraScan 70, which enables an automatic testing with de-
tection of the hardness indentation, starting from the base material to
the top of the welded structure with testing force of 9.8 N (HV1). After
hardness testing, the samples were grinded and polished again to
eliminate the hardness indentations and to prepare them for the next
analysis. Different etching agents were used for determining the mi-
crostructure of the welded layers. The etching agent Beraha I is used to
show the martensite (blue to brown), bainite, perlite, and ferrite phases.
The retained austenite and carbides remain bright without etching ef-
fects. The etching agent Murakami is used for visualizing carbides with
a dark colouring. The other phases are not affected by the etching
agent. Furthermore, the etching agent Nital is used to show the heat-
affected zone (HAZ), re-melted zone, and austenitizing zone of the
layers. The etching times were set to 4 s for Beraha I, to 17 min for
Murakami, and to 10 s for Nital. After etching, the samples were
cleaned by isopropanol alcohol and analysed with a light microscope
Axiotech 100HD by Zeiss.
2.3. Analysis of wire feed speed
The CMT process involves the precise control of the wire feed speed
by the power supply to keep the arc length constant and independent of
surface and stick-out changes. This is done to detach the droplet by
retracting the wire. This process control creates a difference between
the adjusted and real (measured) wire feed speed. Hence it is important
to analyse the difference between adjusted and real wire feed speed
before starting with the experimental tests. In Fig. 2, it can be seen that
the measured wire feed speeds are lower than the adjusted parameters
for welding velocities of 0.3 m/min to 0.9 m/min. The analysed dif-
ference is between 20% and 32%. The influence of the welding speed on
the wire feed speed is shown in Fig. 2 as well. The measured wire feed
speed remains constant with varied welding speeds for up to 10 m/min.
Above 10 m/min, increasing the welding speed increases the measured
wire feed speed. This can be explained by the geometry of the weld
pool. At slow welding speeds, the weld pool size increases; therefore,
the controller should reduce the real wire feed speed to keep the arc
length constant. If the welding speed is even higher, the weld pool re-
mains small, the arc length is constant, and the real wire feed speed
does not change.
3. Experimental results
3.1. Energy per unit length (EL)
A very important factor to describe the thermal energy in the
welding process is the energy per unit length of the weld (EL). As this
Fig. 2. Difference between adjusted and measured wire feed speeds for welding
velocities between 0.3 m/in and 0.9 m/min.
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Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 269 (2019) 109–116
Fig. 3. The energy per unit length with varied welding speed and wire feed
speed at bypass temperature of 25 °C, where n is number of trials.
energy increases, the thermal field increases in size and the cool-down
time also goes up. This has an effect on the mechanical properties and
the microstructure of the weld. It can be derived from Eqs. (1) and (2)
that EL increases with increased wire feed speed and lowered welding
speed. Fig. 3 shows that the variation of these two welding parameters
in the experimental trials led to energy levels from 0.9 kJ/cm to 7.4 kJ/
cm. The results also show that the effect of the wire feed speed on the
energy per unit length is larger at wire speeds up to 7 m/min. However,
at higher wire feed speeds, the welding speed conversely has greater
influence on the energy per unit length.
3.2. Weld bead geometry and process limits
For WAAM, it is important to investigate the weld bead geometry by
means of weld bead width and height. This is necessary for calculating
the positioning of the welding torch in z-direction to manufacture the
next layers. Fig. 4 depicts the results of the measured weld bead width
and height as an average of three measurements. It is shown that in-
crease in wire feed speeds and decrease in welding speeds lead to wide
weld bead widths. The adjustable wire feed speed could not be in-
creased beyond 13 m/min because of the limited power supply. With
these parameters, weld beads with widths between 2.7 mm and 9.4 mm
could be generated. The welding speed has a greater influence on the
weld bead height compared to the wire feed speed (Fig. 4a and b).
On the basis of the preliminary results, wall structures were pro-
duced with three parameter sets (Table 3) and three different energy
levels. Fig. 5 (left) shows an example of the produced structures with
near-net-shaped geometry and low surface roughness. Fig. 5 (right)
shows cross-sections of three wall structures with different energy le-
vels and thus different widths. These structures have a near-net-shaped
geometry and the structure width remaining constant from bottom
layer to top layer. This leads to a reduction in the amount of work
necessary during finishing. Thus, high-quality components and low
post-processing costs can be expected.
3.3. Hardness and microstructure
The multilayer structure was evaluated using hardness measure-
ments along the structure height at the centreline of each sample. All
deposited structures, with varied energy per unit length (EL) and a
bypass temperature of 25 °C (room temperature), have a similar hard-
ness profile, as shown in Fig. 6. Two areas (A and B) can be dis-
tinguished. Area A, which has a hardness of approx. 500 HV1, is af-
fected by etching with Nital acid turning dark. The second area, B, has a
hardness of approx. 690 HV1. This area remains bright after etching
and is slightly affected. These etching effects are described below.
The resulting hardness in Areas A and B can be explained with the
continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagram (Fig. 7). During
Y. Ali, et al. Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 269 (2019) 109–116

Fig. 4. Layer width and height with varied wire feed speed and welding speed at bypass temperature of 25 °C, where n is the number of trials.

Fig. 5. Weld surface of multilayer deposits (left) and cross-sections of three generated wall structures with different weld bead widths (right) at a bypass temperature
of 100 °C.

cooling, martensite is formed below 290 °C (MS). Since martensite’s
finish temperature is under room temperature, the microstructure will
contain retained austenite at room temperature. Thus, the micro-
structure at room temperature consists of martensite, carbides, and
retained austenite, as shown in Fig. 6. During solidification, the car-
bides are created in the form of primary carbides of the types M7C3
(Cr), M2C (Mo), and MC (V). These carbides are very fine and cannot be
clearly detected with a light microscope. When depositing the next
layer, a part of the underlying layer re-melts and will cool down with
the new layer. Another part of the underlying layers is heated above the
austenitizing temperature and the martensitic phase is re-transformed
to austenite. Martensite, carbides, and retained austenite form again

Fig. 6. Vickers hardness along the centreline of wall structure (along the red line) and microstructure of Areas A and B (etched with Nital), Tbypass = 25 °C (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article).

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Y. Ali, et al.
Fig. 7. Continuous-cooling-transformation (CCT) and tempering diagram of X37CrMoV5-1 (DE, 2018).
Fig. 8. Hardness profiles at EL of 0.95 kJ/cm and different bypass temperatures.
after cooling. The underlying layers that do not reach the austenitizing
temperature are tempered, which means that tempered martensite is
produced and a part of the retained austenite is transformed into
martensite. Compared to the untempered microstructure (Fig. 6), the
tempered microstructure contains a lower proportion of retained aus-
tenite (bright area). The tempering effect, as shown in the tempering
diagram, is reflected in reduced hardness values of this area, (Fig. 6,
Area A). In Area B, composed of 2.5 layers in this case, the layers are
not yet tempered, leading to a structure consisting of martensitic phase,
carbides, and retained austenite. Therefore, the resulting micro-
structure in Area B shows a higher hardness level compared to Area A.
These findings lead to the following hypothesis: When the bypass
temperature of the deposited layers can be kept above the martensite
start temperature, the microstructure remains in the austenitic phase
and does not transform to the martensitic phase. Thus, homogeneous
mechanical properties and microstructure can be achieved in all di-
rections of the deposited wall structure. Various investigations with
different energy per unit length (EL) values and varying bypass tem-
peratures have been carried out. The results of the hardness tests are
plotted in Figs. 8 and 9 for two energy levels EL. Fig. 8 shows hardness
curves for samples with bypass temperatures of 100, 300, and 600 °C at
Fig. 9. Hardness profiles at EL of 5.5 kJ/cm and different bypass temperatures.
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Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 269 (2019) 109–116
Fig. 10. Schematic representation of CCT diagram with temperature profiles of
the first layer while building wall structures with bypass temperature of 300 °C
and 600 °C.
low energy per unit length (EL) of 0.95 kJ/cm. At bypass temperatures
below 300 °C, the samples have the same hardness profile as described
in Fig. 6, with two hardness areas: Areas A and B. If the bypass tem-
perature increases to 300 °C, Area B, with a hardness level of approx.
690 HV1, increases as well and spreads further at higher bypass tem-
peratures of up to 600 °C. However, there is still Area A, where the
hardness is between 500 HV1 and 600 HV1. This remaining area can be
explained with the help of the thermal field.
Fig. 9 shows the hardness curves for samples with increased energy
per unit length (EL) of 5.5 kJ/cm. At bypass temperatures of
300–600 °C, the deposited material has a homogeneous hardness profile
along the entire height of the wall structures. If the bypass temperature
increases to 600 °C, the hardness level increases as well, because of the
lower welding time. Compared to a bypass temperature of 600 °C, the
production of a wall structure with bypass temperature of 300 °C re-
quires a longer waiting time after each layer is deposited for cooling, to
reach the desired bypass temperature. This means that the total welding
time at bypass temperature of 300 °C is longer (Fig. 10). The CCT dia-
gram makes it clear that longer cooling times lead to a reduction in the
level of hardness of the material.
Figs. 11 and 12 show the microstructure of the upper layer of the
wall structure (Area B in Fig. 6), with different etching agents. By using
‘Beraha I’, the martensitic phase could be shown; it is coloured from
brown to blue, as seen in Fig. 11. The bright areas contain retained
austenite and carbides. The alloy elements in the tool steel shift mar-
tensite finish at temperatures below room temperature. As a result, a
certain proportion of the austenite is not converted into martensite by
rapid cooling, but remains as a retained austenite in the microstructure.
This proportion of retained austenite can be converted into martensite
by tempering in low temperatures. Tempering between 400 °C and
550 °C leads to a secondary hardening and a reduced ductility, which is
not recommended for hot work tool steel. The carbide precipitation can
Y. Ali, et al.
Fig. 11. Visualization of martensitic phase of the upper layer using etching
agent ‘Beraha I’ (Tbypass = 100 °C, PS2).
Fig. 12. Visualization of Carbides of the upper layer using etching agent
‘Murakami’ (Tbypass = 100 °C, PS2).
Fig. 13. Thermal field at bypass temperature of 300 °C and EL of 0.95 kJ/cm.
be shown by using ‘Murakami’ etching suspension, as seen in Fig. 12.
No other phase of the microstructure is affected by the etching agent.
The retained austenite and the carbide precipitation show the direction
of solidification in the layers.
3.4. Thermal field
To explain the difference in the resulting hardness profiles, a con-
stant bypass temperature of 300 °C was investigated with different
115
Journal of Materials Processing Tech. 269 (2019) 109–116
Fig. 14. Thermal field at bypass temperature of 300 °C and EL of 5.5 kJ/cm.
energy per unit length values in the range of 0.95–5.5 kJ/cm (Figs. 8
and 9). Furthermore, the thermal field in the wall structures during the
welding process was analysed. Figs. 13 and 14 show the correlated
thermal fields for the cases studied during the deposition of the top
layer and two diagrams, which present the measured temperature
profile along the lines (L1 and L2) from the thermal field. In this case,
the IR camera was set to measure a temperature range between 200 °C
and 600 °C. Fig. 13 shows that the temperatures of the structure next to
the base plate are already below the martensite start temperature of
300 °C. In other words, the martensitic phase has already been formed
in this area and is tempered after each layer. This is reflected again in
the lower level of hardness (Fig. 8). In Fig. 14, as a result of an increased
energy per unit length (EL) of 5.5 kJ/cm, a larger area of the wall
structure is heated above 600 °C after each layer. Only a small area of
the structure next to the base plate remains at a temperature below
300 °C. This area can be noticed in the first two hardness values in
Fig. 9, which have a hardness level between 500 and 550 HV1.
4. Conclusions
This paper investigates the use of hot work tool steel with WAAM in
terms of process technology and metallurgy. The following conclusions
are obtained:
• Real wire feed speed in CMT-process is 20–32% less than the ad-
justed feed speed.
• WAAM of hot work tool steel can be carried out without creation of
any cracks.
• Layer widths of 2.7–9.4 mm can be achieved by adjusting the pro-
cess parameters.
• Near-net-shaped structures with equal layer width can be produced.
• The mechanical properties can be adjusted by adjusting the energy
input and thermal field.
• Keeping the bypass temperatures above martensite start tempera-
ture (Ms) leads to the production of structures with homogeneous
hardness profiles along the structure height.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Thüringer Aufbaubank and the
Thuringian Ministry of Economics, Science and Digital Society. The
research project ‘Temperature-controlled large moulding tools’
(Duration: 1 October 2016 to 30 September 2019, Project No. 2016 FGR
0035) is funded by the Thuringian Ministry of Economics, Science, and
Y. Ali, et al.
Digital Society, with funding from the European Social Fund. The au-
thors would further like to thank Fronius Deutschland GmbH for pro-
viding the necessary welding equipment.
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