Arcam AB fka AMAVF

[Tom Joad]

EBM verses laser additive, a video comparison of the build steps.

Wish I could find a video of them building the same object, however, the videos do illustrate how much faster EBM is.

Renishaw

Renishaw

Fraunhofer

Fraunhofer building a turbine blade

Arcam. Here's where you see the cathode ray tube television like performance of their machine.

Arcam EBM

After reviewing a some literature I ran across the waste ratios and found that waste powder was consumed by support structures in both the laser process and EBM. However, in EBM the support structures did not need to be as robust as they were in laser, so the conclusion is there appears to be more waste in using laser additive processes, except in the Fraunhofer process. I had never seen the later before.

Here, a bike builder discusses working with EBM and DMLS generated parts and you see him remove the support structures from both. The DMLS structures clearly use more raw material and so there's more waste. From everything I've read so far, additive manufacturing involving a melt has similar needs for a robust support structure, but I found no video for removing supports from laser melted parts. Fraunhofer appears to need no supports in their process.

I can't quite accept that laser sintering generates as robust a part as electron beam melting or laser melting as they're not fully dense but it looks like Spencer Wright, the fellow in the video, is considering sintered parts.

DMLS verses EBM titanium parts