Anisotropy in Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing

The Cold Spray process is getting more attention as an additive manufacturing technology due to its capability of producing near-shape parts at high deposition rates. As the technology has been traditionally used for coatings production, the effect of spraying parameters and grow strategies on the properties of cold sprayed bulk materials still not well understood. In this work, specimens were produced at different spraying orientations in order to test their tensile strength and evaluate their "as-sprayed" anisotropy. These specimens were manufactured from different powder materials taking advantage of complex robot tool paths; the robot tool paths, were specially developed to achieve vertical material growth and avoid tilted edges during the spraying operations. The results show that the spraying orientation has a considerable influence on the produced bulk properties for all the materials involved in this study. In order to mitigate the effect of spraying orientation, different post-processing methods are discussed. These results, can be used as an initial design guide for engineering parts produced with the cold spray technology.