Arcam AB fka AMAVF

[mauser96]

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.titanium.org/resource/resmgr/2010_2014_papers/Ackelid_Ulf_2010_PowderMetal.pdf

look at the illustration just before the conclusion. It shows a fatigue crack. This ties in nicely with the work done at Oak Ridge. EBM is the only process where the micro structure of the metal can be altered during the process. So at fatigue prone locations the metal can be altered , just in that area, to be less brittle, less prone to crack, while retaining different desired metal qualities in other areas of the part. This ability is still in the early lab stage and will take years to show up in production machines.

I can't think of any other company that has gotten so much free( to them) research. All positive results flow to Arcam. Meaning that those sponsoring the research, who no doubt know a lot more than I do about EBM, regard it as critical to the aerospace industry of the future.

I remember the British Comet jet. Many crashed due to the simple (in retrospect) flaw of designing the windows rectangular with sharp corners rather than rounded corners, resulting in fatigue cracks that rapidly spread from the corners of the window.A fiction book by Nevil Schute (an aeronautical engineer too) described a very similar scenario before the real one happened.