Electron Beam Gun Design and Beam Quality Control for Additive Manufacturing and Welding

Electron beam processes include welding, additive and surface modification. Electron beam welding is frequently applied to high value components. Examples include rotors and stators for aero-engines, primary components for nuclear reactors and space fuel tanks.

Electron beam welding offers advantages and benefits such: low heat input and low distortion, increased productivity and/or reduced risk of defects compared to conventional multi pass welding, ability to produce high quality welds of dissimilar materials with very different melting points, among other advantages. In particular, space applications can benefit from EB processing as it works in a vacuum, it has a high energy efficiency, and it can be made a low mass system.

The EB team at TWI have worked in the design and development of EB guns and EB-related equipment for both welding and additive EB machine manufacturers, as well as end users.

This paper will present a case study on an electron beam gun design; and a second case study using the BeamAssure quality system to achieve high integrity EB welding.