Research Objective

Research and Development of Innovative systems and methods for advanced Additive Manufacturing and other technologies in this area. Develop/nurture human talent and resource for next generation advanced manufacturing industry. Establishing self-sustainable world class advanced AM research area

Current Research work

Development of Selective Electron Beam Melting(SEBM) powder bed metal Additive Manufacturing or 3D printing machine. This technology is specific and unique, globally IISc will be first research group to develop 1OkW SEBM technology. I am currently leading the CoE for Addtive Manufacturing and my responsibilities are process development, designing of high-frequency switching electron beam generator, high degassing rate vacuum systems, high-temperature build chamber instrumentation, process monitoring sensor integration. AM metal powder surface analysis and degradation mechanism.

AM technology

Additive Manufacturing (AM) of metals, widely known as 3D printing, is a method of manufacturing that forms parts from powder, the wire that proceeds layer-by-layer. Selective Electron Beam Melting (EBM) and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) are both powder bed fusion (PBF) processes, that selectively melt distribute layers of metal powder to produce a part from the bottom up. PBF processes have the advantage of being able to produce more complex shapes and features (e.g. overhangs). All metal AM processes have advantages over the casting process and subtraction machining in that unique geometries can be produced, there is a low cost of retooling, and small production quantities can be more economical. Metal AM has received increasing attention for direct production of end-use parts and recently these technologies are adopted by many technological giants such as GE, Rolls Royce and etc., there are other AM process technique, those are all based on Directed energy deposition (DED) process gives higher build rate and very poor accuracy in the built components.

In 2017, the Additive Manufacturing (AM) industry, consisting of all AM products and services worldwide, grew 21% to $7.336 billion and it is poised to grow up to $21.50 billion by 2025. AM may play a pivotal role in changing the manufacturing paradigm and contributing to addressing the societal challenges of our time, such as global warming, energy transition, population aging, and decreasing resources.

Electron beam additive manufacturing technology

The current research activity of the center is to develop selective electron beam melting (SEBM)-powder bed additive manufacturing (PBAM) machine. The SEBM technology is unique in terms of process capability and currently, this technology is with only one manufacturer is available. SEBM technology is widely used to build bio-medical metallic implants and aerospace components. At present, only two research groups are working worldwide on developing next-generation electron beam AM machines and IISc is one among the two-research group to work on SEBM-PBAM technology. The uniqueness of IISc developing SEBM is high power and high-speed process, currently, there is no much publication and technology know-how in this space and globally this technology is very initial stages of research and development. Current status of the IISc’s machine is reached to machine integration stage and AM-CoE would be starting the experiments on process development and integration of process for different materials. The created machine will be used as a test rig for most of the future development by Industries and IISc.