Experimental investigation of localized electrochemical deposition-based micro-additive manufacturing process

Localized Electro-chemical Deposition (LED) is a non-thermal additive manufacturing process for fabricating micron-sized 3D metallic parts. In the present LED study, the process parameters, namely, applied voltage, frequency of current, inter-electrode gap (IEG), and scanning speed, are varied to determine their effect on layer height and width. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) study based on the statistical design of experiments (DOE) is conducted to determine the most significant process parameters and their impact on the percentage contribution of output responses. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is utilized to determine the optimum values of the process parameters while achieving maximum and minimum values of the layer height and width, respectively. A single bead of 5 mm length is deposited over a brass substrate for all experiments during DOE. It is observed that a uniform deposition can be achieved up to a critical voltage of 4 V, and beyond that, the deposited structure becomes nonuniform.