Arcam AB fka AMAVF

[Tom Joad]

CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC TEXTURE CONTROLLED MICROSTRUCTURE BY EBM. Nice to see the patent show up along with a connection to a new company, United Technologies. Still, has anyone patented a site specific control of crystalline structure for EBM? What about SLM? Site specific control means you can have hardness, and have toughness, where you need those not always compatible qualities, in one part.

I'm skeptical that SLM can do this in a site specific way (at least to the degree that can be done in EBM) due to the process: melt pools are smaller, cooling rates are higher, so metal grains are smaller and often not optimal for end use in mind, so heat treatment on the entire part is often required for SLM parts. For EBM the story is different-

Site specific control of crystallographic grain orientation through electron beam additive manufacturing

No patents appeared but that's a nice bit of research. Then I did a search on "Site specific control of crystallographic grain orientation through selective laser melting manufacturing" and got only one article, the one in the link above.

Now, if that represents all that's known about these technologies at this point, it's clear that EBM has at least one very solid advantage over SLM, but SLM has its advantages over EBM,

Comparison of the microstructures and mechanical properties of Ti–6Al–4V fabricated by selective laser melting and electron beam melting

however, that does not include site specific microstructure. A search on "Site specific control crystallographic grain orientation selective laser melting additive manufacturing" leads to a long list of interesting articles.

Google scholar search "site specific control ..."

That's for another day, for me. Anyone?

So, good to see some are buying into Arcam but I'm still a bit puzzled as to why a great deal more interest in EBM isn't showing up, but then, superior technology doesn't always win the day. An example from another field, that the Linux distro, Debian, isn't on more computers than Windows 10 speaks to that.

What does Elliott’s Paul Singer have in mind?