Results
During experimental runs it was found that due to the high power being supplied by the torch, the base material was warping extremely. The result of this was a constant distance between the wire feeder and the base material was impossible to maintain. One problem which came about was that the moten wire being deposited often caused the fusing of the wire to the base material, making further movement impossible. It was also found that new software and hardware was needed to capture and manipulate the image to provide real time data feedback for the Labview Program. The Labview Program used Code Interface Node (CIN) which is supported by Labview 3.0 The stand for holding the torch and wire feeder is not aligned causing uneven results in deposition as the torch moved back and forth. A need was found for stand redesign. A need was also found to have data clusters of 2-D arrays from a CAD program to provide data for Labview in the control of the manufacture of the prototype.
The redesign of the base material clamps was successful. It screws holding it down were merely replaced by springs to provide flexibility in changing the base material. Several designs were made of the torch and wire feeder holder interface. The designs are still under discussion. Research in using Autocad showed that by saving the drawing as a .dxf file, the data from drawing were saved as text easily decoded for other programs to use. The utility of Matlab is still to be explored.