Aiming at handling the contradiction between power constraint of on-orbit manufacturing and the high energy input requirement of metal additive manufacturing (AM), this paper presents an AM process based on small-power metal fine wire feed, which produces thin-wall structures of height-to-width ratio up to 40 with core-forming power only about 50 W. In this process, thermal resistance was introduced to optimize the gradient parameters which greatly reduces the step effect of the typical AM process, succeeded in the surface roughness (Ra) less than 5 μm, comparable with that obtained by selective laser melting (SLM). After a 10 min electrolyte-plasma process, the roughness of the fabricated specimen was further reduced to 0.4 μm, without defects such as pores and cracks observed. The ultimate tensile strength of the specimens measured about 500 MPa, the relative density was 99.37, and the Vickers hardness was homogeneous. The results show that the proposed laser-Joule wire feed-direct metal deposition process (LJWF-DMD) is a very attractive solution for metal AM of high surface quality parts, particularly suitable for rapid prototyping for on-orbit AM in space.
Microstructure and Property of Thin-wall Part by Laser Additive Manufacturing