The Development of Electron Beam Melting for High-Volume Production

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is an additive manufacturing technology based on layer base fusion of metal powders. EBM has been developed by Arcam AB in Sweden since the late 90’s. The first commercial EBM machine was introduced in 2003 and the first EBM serial production of titanium components started in Italy in 2007. EBM has been used in final production for many years and has produced more than 40 000 EBM devices have been implanted for the medical industry. The purpose of this presentation is to review a decade of EBM development from a technical point of view. We will describe how the technology has evolved into a production tool and show the EBM advances that make the system reliable for high volume manufacturing. New machine features such as software, process monitoring and new electron gun components will be described. Mechanical data has also been compared to traditional manufacturing process and shows to be superior or equivalent.