In this study, cold metal transfer (CMT) based wire arc additive manufacture technology was used to lay a 6~7 mm thick SnSb8Cu4 alloy layer on the surface of Q235 steel. The microstructure, phase composition and element distribution of tinbased Babbitt alloy were detected and analyzed using optical microscopy (OM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). A Brinell hardness tester and a universal testing machine tested the hardness, tensile strength and interfacial bonding strength of SnSb8Cu4 alloy ingots and CMT based arc additive layers. The research results indicate that the CMT arc additive manufacturing process does not change the phase composition of the alloy, but optimizes the microstructure of tinbased Babbitt alloy and improves its mechanical performance through strengthening mechanisms such as fine grain strengthening and second phase strengthening. The average Brinell hardness and the average tensile strength of the SnSb8Cu4 alloy arc additive layer are 26.3HBW10/250/30 and 79.11 MPa, respectively. Compared with cast Babbitt alloy, the arc additive process increases the hardness by 10.04% and the tensile strength by 25.57%. In addition, with the arc additive process, a middle interface layer with a thickness of about 7 μm is formed between tin-based Babbitt alloy and Q235 steel, which is a metallurgical bonding with an interface bonding strength of 91.31 MPa.