Abstract
In the cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM) process, layer-by-layer stacking is a good method to achieve coating AM. Different from AM processes such as selective laser cladding, which can quickly realize trajectory planning based on commercial software, the spraying trajectory of the CSAM process cannot be created easily due to the “one-stroke” character. The spray path cannot be intersected and the coating deposition cannot be interrupted during the spraying process. What’s more, the spray gun or the workpiece held by the robot usually needs to be deflected by a certain angle to compensate the coating edges. An accurate and efficient spraying trajectory for a given workpiece is the most basic and important part in CSAM process. This article proposes a novel parametric layered slicing algorithm for STL files and an optimized rapidly exploring random tree (RRT) algorithm, so as to generate spraying trajectory accurately and quickly, especially for a part with multiple features. The simulation results revealed that the algorithms can efficiently generate the corresponding spraying trajectory for CSAM.
