Opportunities for Novel Electron Beam Processing

Electron beam (EB) welding is well established in the aerospace community and over 200 new machines become available in global industry each year. The capabilities of EB welding systems are not limited to welding alone. In their current configuration or with minor enhancements these machines may be applied to achieve a range of complementary, innovative and novel processing operations.

This paper will review EB processing opportunities relevant to the aerospace sector. Processes covered will include additive variants such as powder and wire-fed techniques, subtractive variants such as drilling and cutting by ablation, and surface engineering variants such as texturing, Surfi-Sculpt^® and local heat treatments. These topics will be discussed for use at a macro or micro scale and for a range of relevant aluminium, titanium, iron and nickel based alloys. It will be demonstrated that novel use of EB technology may create engineered features which would be challenging to manufacture by other means.