Mask-less electrochemical additive manufacturing: a feasibility study

Additive manufacturing (AM) of metallic structures by laser based layered manufacturing processes involve thermal damages. In this work, the feasibility of mask-less electrochemical deposition as a nonthermal metallic AM process has been studied. Layer by layer localized electrochemical deposition using a microtool tip has been performed to manufacture nickel microstructures. Three-dimensional free hanging structures with about 600  μ m height and 600  μ m overhang are manufactured to establish the process capability. An inhouse built CNC system was integrated in this study with an electrochemical cell to achieve 30 layers thick microparts in about 5 h by AM directly from STL files generated from corresponding CAD models. The layer thickness achieved in this process was about 10  μ m and the minimum feature size depends on the tool width. Simulation studies of electrochemical deposition performed to understand the pulse wave characteristics and their effects on the localization of the deposits.