Media

This video demonstrates the steps involved in the Arcam Electron Beam Melting Process. In the video, the black vertical lines are a grid that is a part of the heat shield surrounding the deposition chamber (in the foreground). You are viewing the processing steps happening in the deposition chamber (in the background through the heat shield grid).

First, a defocused electron beam sinters the powder layer using low power and high scan velocity. Multiple horizontal lines are seen moving across the part, from top to bottom. Next, the contours (external edges) are melted. In this step, we can see multiple rapidly moving melt pools which are simultaneously maintained by rapid movement of the electron beam. This is a unique feature of the Arcam machines. After that, the region in between the contours is melted using a focused electron beam in a raster pattern.

In the EOS Laser Powder Bed AM Process, a thin (20 or 60 micron) layer of powder is first spread across the top of the part and the powder bed. The laser is then used to fuse the powered to fill in the 2-D part shape in a series of "stripes". Within each stripe the laser is moving back and forth at a very rapid rate in a raster pattern. After the entire 2-D shape is filled in, the laser traces the outer shape of the part to enhance the quality of the part external surface. After this, the process repeats with the spreading of another powder layer.

The result of this process is a 3-D solid part build from a series of very thin solidified metal layers.

This video was taken by fitting a GoPro inside the EOS M290 build chamber during the build. It is interesting to notice the cloud of powder that results from the laser hitting the powder bed.

In this video, both powder bed and melt pool monitoring of the laser powder bed fusion process are conducted using a machine learning algorithm. Various flaws are detected and highlighted with colors corresponding to the specific type of defect.

This video demonstrates the process of Binder Jetting on the ExOne Innovent machine at CMU. In this particular video, stainless steel powder is being bound together layer-by-layer, and is later infiltrated with bronze after curing of the liquid binder.