Review on powder-based electron beam additive manufacturing technology

• Main Authors: Gong Xibing, Anderson Ted, Chou Kevin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2014-01-01
• Series: Manufacturing Review
• Subjects: Electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM); Geometric attributes; Mechanical properties; Microstructures; Metallic powder; Process modeling; Process metrology
• Online Access: https://mfr.edp-open.org/articles/mfreview/full_html/2014/01/mfreview140001/mfreview140001.html

This paper presents a thorough literature review of the powder-based electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) technology. EBAM, a relatively new additive manufacturing (AM) process, can produce full-density metallic parts directly from the electronic data of the designed part geometry. EBAM has gained broad attentions from different industries such as aerospace and biomedical, with great potential in a variety of applications. The paper first introduces the general aspects of EBAM. The unique characteristics, advantages and challenges of EBAM are then presented. Moreover, the hub of this paper includes extensive discussions of microstructures, mechanical properties, geometric attributes, which impact the application ranges of EBAM parts, with focus on commonly used titanium alloys (in particular, Ti-6Al-4V). In the end, modeling efforts and process metrology of the EBAM process are discussed as well.