AS title suggests and no i didn’t even waste search energy. Not sure why it couldn’t work if nobody has but if so tell me why or lets highlight who did it!
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Nobody did yet.
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You could be the first @AlexO !
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I saw someone trying to make a metal 3D printer by using a welder to deposit material and then a mill to remove excess down to the finished part size.
That sounds like an incredibly difficult process and the gantry would be the least of your worries!
It would be cool to see for sure. Mounting the welder and having it turn on and off should be simple, but dealing with accelerations and speeds will be the hardest part I would think. Sorta like pressure advance on a 3d printer. Its not going to know that the welder needs to slow down or speed up.
That was a constant side project by Diabase- it’s a HARD problem. As far as I know, they never got it “production ready”.
There have been interesting projects. The Germans built a bridge by this method starting from either side and meeting in the middle.
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The mpcnc and lr were tough enough. Don’t look to me to invent 
Did we? 
You did. I marveled at how wonderfully German that approach was. 
Edit: I’ll try and find links. The one I remember wasn’t the Dutch bridge that comes up in the web search results.
Edit2: I don’t think it was this one either, but rather a follow on to it.
https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/67726593-c1a0-4cbc-bf22-43b1fc53dfa5/content
The one I remember used a similar approach, but grew from (IIRC) four points, two on each side. It then met in the middle. Can’t find links at the moment.
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Someone left the german engineers unsupervised again…
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I played around the idea using a wire feed welder using flux core wire. There are a few problems. Heat of course is obvious of course. You can’t just add a fan or even a exhaust near the wire gun. You need the flux gas to shield your weld from oxygen. The big boys bury the weld in a flux loaded sand. Extra cost and inpractial if your building layers. The rapid heat build up killed the tool head in less than 20 minutes.
On the other hand using steppers to make a track welder was quick and easy