Among the several metallic additive manufacturing (MAM) technologies available, the wire-and-arc based ones are very beneficial due to the lower operational costs, higher efficiency use of raw materials, and high deposition rates achieved. The Cold Metal Transfer (CMT) process stands out by the lower heat input compared to the other wire-and-arc based methods. On the other hand, processes such as Pulse Multi Control (PMC) and its variants have not been tested yet in additive manufacturing and for this reason they should be evaluated. Therefore, considering the technologies potential and the need of automotive and aeronautical industry of manufacturing parts of complex and optimized geometry in a faster way, the study of these technologies is very relevant. Thus, the objective of this paper is the additive manufacturing of walls with Al-Mg alloy using CMT, CMT-Pulse, PMC, PMC-Mix, and MIG-Pulse, and the evaluation of the hardness, mechanical strength, and porosity of the manufactured parts aiming future industrial applications. The results showed good mechanical properties, small pore fraction, and geometric uniformity of parts produced with PMC and PMC-Mix. MIG-Pulse and PMC parts presented the smaller pore fraction among the GMAW variants, although no difference was noticed in the mechanical properties of the parts.
Aviation Maintenance industry, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) procedures need to keep up with the technological evolution and evolve from the 2D support to the 3D. The available manuals for learning and training MRO tasks rely much on old 2D drawings and lists of maintenance steps to be performed sequentially. However, these are complex actions that require and would benefit greatly from a 3D insight in order to be quickly and comprehensible absorbed. Virtual Reality (VR) apps are potentially a suitable option to turn these procedures closer to reality and, thus, improving competences and skills. Amongst the several maintenance optimization developments of the AIRMES project, which is cradled in the EU Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking programme, the above concept is applied to maintenance execution by developing a VR app to help practitioners in the process of carrying out specific maintenance activities as removing and positioning components into aircraft structures. The VR app runs on a mobile platform that uses a smartphone and a portable motion capture device coupled with a head mounted device allowing the practitioners to learn and to train onsite on how to proceed with the maintenance operations. The practitioners will be in an immersive and interactive environment where both the host aircraft structure section with the target component and auxiliary/peripheral systems parts are displayed and in which the 3D component can be removed by virtual hands that emulate, through the motion capture device, the hands of the user. The system developed provides a high-level training and reliable information to the technician on the maintenance operations for a dedicated situation and facilitate the identification and execution of the procedure to be applied, improving the time for repair.
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