WAAM Post-Processing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing is still accelerating, not maturing. activity sat at one filing a year in 2022 and reached fifteen by 2024 — the claim map for post-processing steps is being drawn now, not decades ago.
- India dominates the filing venue, not the US or Europe. 21 of the tracked filings route through the Indian receiving office against 8 for Europe and 7 for the US, a distribution most competitor-watch lists miss.
- Citation weight sits on a handful of records. the most-cited family has been referenced 14 times while most of the corpus has none, so influence is concentrated well before filing volume peaked.
Filing growth compares 2021 (3 records) with 2024 (15) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 44 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) builds near-net-shape metal parts by depositing weld wire layer by layer, but the deposited part is rarely usable as-built. It carries residual stress, an oxidised or rippled surface, and a microstructure shaped by repeated thermal cycling rather than by design. This landscape isolates the patent activity around the steps that turn a WAAM deposit into a finished component: post-machining, heat treatment, residual stress relief and surface finishing, cross-referenced against the welding, additive-manufacturing and powder-metallurgy classification codes that these processes actually get filed under.
The corpus is small — 44 published families against a classification and keyword filter that is deliberately narrow — which is itself informative: post-processing claims for WAAM are still a specialist filing area rather than a crowded one. Read the counts as a map of where claim space is open, not as a measure of how commercially important WAAM post-processing already is.
Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 44-family corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which classification codes carry the underlying technical content.
Filing trend: slow start, sharp acceleration
Filings were flat at zero through 2017, held near one a year through the 2022 midpoint, then climbed to a peak of 15 in 2024. The most recent year (2026) shows only 4 filings, but that figure is an artefact of publication lag — filings made in late 2025 and 2026 have not all cleared the roughly 18-month gap to publication yet, so the true 2025–2026 count is understated.
IPC composition: welding-code dominant, additive-manufacturing code close behind
B23K (welding, soldering and brazing) covers 42 of 44 records, confirming that post-processing claims for WAAM are drafted primarily as welding-process claims rather than as generic additive-manufacturing claims. B33Y and B22F appear in roughly half the corpus each, and smaller counts in F01D, B23P, H05H and B21J point to application-specific filings — turbine components, forging integration, plasma-based finishing — that sit at the edges of the core technology rather than at its centre.
Shares are the percentage of the 44 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Post-Processing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about wire arc additive manufacturing post-processing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in the corpus
Method for manufacturing turbine labyrinth seal using wire arc additive manufacturing
Filed by Turbo Powertech, this family claims a labyrinth seal — mounted between a turbine diaphragm and rotor to limit gas leakage and friction — built with a ring-shaped body and protruding tooth part, where the body is deposition-manufactured by wire arc additive manufacturing.US20240410290A1 · published 2024-12-12
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20210339340A1 | Method for preparing multiple-material variable-rigidity component by efficient collaborative additive manufa… | 14 |
| 2 | US20230220526A1 | Steel Material for Forming Components Using Additive Manufacturing and Use of a Steel Material of This Type | 8 |
| 3 | US20230158595A1 | Prediction and control of product shape quality in wire and arc additive manufacturing through machine learni… | 7 |
| 4 | WO2020261233A1 | System for hot forging wire and arc additive manufacturing | 5 |
| 5 | WO2024194853A1 | Wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) system for producing parts with customized reinforcement | 2 |
| 6 | EP4382245A1 | Additively manufactured combustion chambers, manifold structures and hybrid additive processes related thereto | 2 |
| 7 | US20250001512A1 | Systems for Dual Plasma Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing and Methods Thereof | 1 |
| 8 | EP4613405A3 | Additively manufactured combustion chambers, manifold structures and hybrid additive processes related thereto | 1 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus only and skew toward older filings; read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (8 of 8 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about this field
Three signals worth acting on before assuming this is a mature, well-mapped corner of additive manufacturing patenting.
Growth is recent and still accelerating
The midpoint year of the tracked window shows only one filing; by 2024 that had risen to fifteen. This is a technology area where the bulk of the claim map has been drawn in the last three to four years, not one with an established prior-art floor going back a decade.
Post-processing claims are filed as welding claims
Almost every record in this corpus sits under the welding, soldering and brazing subclass rather than under a generic additive-manufacturing or powder-metallurgy code. Drafting strategy in this space treats WAAM post-processing as an extension of arc-welding practice, which shapes how prior art should be searched and how claims should be framed to avoid it.
India is the largest single filing venue
India accounts for nearly half of the tracked filings, ahead of Europe, the US and the PCT route combined at this stage of the corpus. A competitor-watch process built only around USPTO and EPO alerts will miss the bulk of the activity in this niche.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wire arc additive manufacturing post-processing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and how concentrated is the field
With 44 families spread across a mix of academic institutes and a small number of corporate filers, no single assignee has built a dense fence yet — but co-filing patterns show where research groups are working together repeatedly.
Collaboration is concentrated in a few research clusters
Nine co-assignee pairs appear in the corpus, with the strongest repeat pairing (Son Jae Wha with three separate co-inventors) suggesting a single lab group filing multiple related applications rather than a broad industry consortium.
Recent-year activity is thin even for the most active filers
The assignees with any latest-year activity at all are filing at a rate of one family per year, and one of them shows a 50% year-on-year decline from that already-low base. No assignee in this corpus has pulled meaningfully ahead on recent momentum.
Venue choice splits sharply from the classic AM landscape
The heavy weighting toward Indian filings, against a smaller and fairly even split between Europe, the US and PCT, marks this out from typical additive-manufacturing patent landscapes where US and Chinese filings usually dominate.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| PDPM INDIAN INST OF INFORMATION TECH DESIGN & MFG JABALPUR | 1 | -50% |
| INDIAN INST OF TECH INDIAN SCHOOL OF MINES DHANBAD | 1 | — |
| Relative Space Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| NOVA University Lisbon | 0 | — |
| TURBO POWERTECH | 0 | — |
| North University of China | 0 | — |
| SON JAE WHA | 0 | — |
| NITTE(DEEMED TO BE UNIV) | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field still being defined at the claim level. Two follow-ups are worth prioritising before drafting or licensing decisions.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the chip list
The under-claimed sub-areas identified here — plasma-assisted finishing, in-process stress relief, forging integration — are exactly where a new filing has room to move, but only a full-text FTO search against the 44-family corpus and its citing art will confirm that.
Explore in Eureka →Track the India filing cluster directly
Nearly half of this corpus routes through the Indian receiving office, a pattern easy to miss on a US/EPO-centric watch list. Setting up a dedicated alert on that venue will surface new entrants faster than a global keyword search alone.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions about this patent landscape
In this landscape, post-processing covers the steps applied after weld-wire deposition to make a WAAM part usable: post-machining to reach final geometry, heat treatment to normalise the microstructure, residual stress relief to counter the distortion built up by repeated thermal cycling, and surface finishing to remove the rippled or oxidised as-deposited surface. These are distinct from the deposition process itself, though many patents claim both together. The search behind this page specifically filtered for claims and descriptions mentioning these post-deposition steps, not for WAAM deposition patents generally.
The corpus is dominated by academic and research-institute filers rather than large industrial players, with no single assignee holding a dense portfolio yet. Co-filing patterns show small clusters of repeat collaborators, most notably around a group of Korean-named inventors filing together multiple times. This is a field where the leading position is still open rather than locked in by an incumbent.
India is the single largest receiving office in this corpus, with 21 of 44 tracked filings, ahead of Europe, the US and the PCT route. This likely reflects strong academic and institutional research activity in Indian technical institutes working on WAAM process development, several of which appear directly in the assignee list. It is a reminder that filing venue does not always track commercial market size — a lot of foundational research patenting happens close to where the research is done.
Not yet, by filing volume: the tracked corpus totals only 44 families across more than a decade, with the bulk of activity concentrated in the last three to four years. Filing accelerated from roughly one a year at the 2022 midpoint to a peak of 15 in 2024, meaning most of the claim space was staked out recently and there is limited deep prior art to search against. That said, the welding-process classification (B23K) is nearly saturated within this narrow filter, so anyone drafting close to arc-welding practice should still check it carefully.
The most-cited family, US20210339340A1, covers a method for preparing a multiple-material, variable-rigidity component using collaborative additive manufacturing, and it has been cited 14 times within this corpus — well ahead of the next most-cited record. High citation counts in a narrow, recent corpus like this one indicate that later filers are building directly on that method, but they should be read as a measure of influence on subsequent patenting, not as evidence that the underlying technology is the most commercially deployed.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.