ABSTRACT
Most products fabricated from wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) have been shown to have the undesirable characteristic of poor surface finish, which has effectively hampered their utilisation for industrial applications. There are some metal additive manufacturing defects (some of which are porosity, cracking, poor surface quality, delamination, oxidation, humping effect, and others) in WAAM techniques that have brought shortcomings to the applicability of the products produced from the WAAM system. In this chapter, the significant influence of WAAM manufacturing parameters on the improvement of aluminium (Al) alloy parts and its impact in mitigating the effect of defects arising during the printing of metallic parts have been critically reported and properly documented. This chapter has presented the benefit of optimising WAAM manufacturing parameters and the corresponding surface post-treatment to facilitate a better surface quality of the Al alloy parts produced via this process for practical applications in industries. It also provides a key research background for future directions.
