Nowadays, 3D printing hardly surprises anyone and the Warsaw University of Technology uses it quite often. However, the JOINT Welding Science Club offers an interesting solution—printing metal parts in a way that is completely different from previously used methods. Their welder became a printer. How?

It’s not impossible at all. Students from the JOINT Welding Science Club operating at the Faculty of Production Engineering of the Warsaw University of Technology, supervised by Paweł Cegielski Ph.D., D.Sc., decided to print metal parts using arc weld-surfacing. It consists in depositing melted wire extruded from the welder electrode clamp onto metal surfaces. Surfacing is most commonly used to regenerate used machinery parts. No one has previously used a welder to print entire objects.

‘In the 90s, they tried to build similar devices, but they were very massive, thick-walled, often weighing a dozen or so kg,’ explains Mateusz Ostrysz, president of the JOINT Welding Science Club. ‘Nowadays, machines enable us to make thin-walled components. We have performed thousands of trials, tested various parameters, and finally obtained satisfying results.’

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WUT'S researchers work on a range of scientific topics which are explored in different areas and on a different scale. Often the outcome of these helps with the development of new technologies or everyday products to come into being.

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