Study on tungsten electrode deposition effect of 3D metal micro-mold during laminated slip welding

3D metal micro-mold fabricated through the micro double-staged laminated object manufacturing process is formed via stacking and fitting of multi-layer 2D micro structures. In this paper, it is suggested that micro-electric resistance slip welding technology be adopted to optimize the connection of micro structures in 3D metal micro-mold. Moreover, the deposition effect of tungsten electrode which was formed on the micro-mold surface and produced during micro-electric resistance slip welding is also studied. Firstly, the temperature field of electric resistance slip welding was simulated by ANSYS software and the maximum temperature in the slip welding area is 1,219 °C when the number of slip welding discharge is 160, which is far lower than the melting point of tungsten electrode material (3,410 °C). Hence, bulk tungsten will not shed during slip welding; however, the wear of the tungsten electrode will be deposited on the surface of the micro-mold in micro-particle shape. Secondly, the influence of slip welding discharge and surface roughness of tungsten electrode on tungsten deposition effect is studied and the study shows that: the content of tungsten within the slip welding area increases gradually as the number of slip welding discharge increases, and decreases gradually as surface roughness of tungsten electrodes increases. Finally, under 160 time’s slip welding discharge and using tungsten electrodes (0.5-mm diameter and 0.12-μm surface roughness), the 3D metal micro-molds which contains 0.4 % tungsten in slip welding area and has a good quality surface was obtained.