"Project Results: Following extensive modelling activities, a novel electron beam gun type has been selected as being suitable for the project application. The gun has been designed is currently being manufactured.
Further tests on the RF Plasma Gun identified that this technology, although offering very significant benefits to the EBM process, would not be ready to deliver a 10kW beam for this project within the schedule. Consequently, and in accordance with the risk register, a contingency plan was initiated to design a 10kW triode gun that could be readily integrated with the Arcam system. The 10kW electron gun was simulated, designed, built and tested at TWI on an experimental system. The gun was integrated with a 10kW high voltage power supply and a filament and bias power supply – all operating at 60kV. During the tests the gun peaking curve was plotted over a range of cathode heating. Also the beam diameter was measured at a working distance representative of that used in the EBM process. These tests showed that the gun was performing as predicted by the computer simulations, and that over most of the beam power range the beam generated was compliant with the project objective i.e. to produce a beam of full width at half maximum (FWHM) of less than 200 microns.
The gun and power supply were then transferred from TWI to Arcam, where they were integrated with an EBM system to allow the gun to be tested using Arcam’s standard procedures, albeit at beam powers of 10kW rather than 3kW."
I read this as a novel electron beam gun type has been selected as being suitable for the project application. The gun has been designed and is currently being manufactured. The new design would not be ready within schedule. As a contingency, a conventional 10kW triode gun that could be readily integrated with the Arcam system was simulated, designed, built and tested at TWI. This gun and power supply were then transferred from TWI to Arcam, where they were integrated with an EBM system to allow the gun to be tested using Arcam’s standard procedures, albeit at beam powers of 10kW rather than 3kW.
The novel gun type is being manufactured. The conventional gun type was built and tested with success. The plan is to use the novel gun in the production units.
I added only a couple of words and condensed some of the text. Do you think that this is part of the message given in the final project report? It looks like they have just started "the ninth inning of FastEBM development." Believe me, you won't hurt my feelings if you think I'm wrong.
"This work presents a new radio frequency (RF) excited plasma cathode electron beam gun design and spectroscopy measurements of an argon plasma cathode. The EB gun was operated at -60 kV accelerating voltage and 84 MHz resonant frequency, and empirical results demonstrated that it was capable of producing beams of up to 3.2 kW power. The gun consists of a plasma chamber used as a hollow cathode or electron source, an RF plasma generation unit and a particle-accelerating unit for extracting the electrons from the plasma chamber and accelerating them to form a beam.
The plasma cathode design is currently limited to low beam current applications, e.g. EB additive manufacturing. Thus, to increase current, a separate experimental set up was developed for carrying out emission spectroscopy measurements of the plasma. Different gases were evaluated and compared against key parameters such as gas flow and pressure in order to gain a deeper understanding of the plasma parameters and how they relate to the beam current."
My take on Arcam is that the EU is willing to spend millions of euros on research . All to benefit a small obscure company located on the periphery of the EU. A company with no known political connections. A company whose tech is well protected by patents and trade secrets. So the benefit of this research can only flow directly to Arcam. Unless all those RU scientists are useless, something substantial is going to result.
The underlying idea must be to promote EU aerospace industry indirectly. Because the EU and the US totally dominate commercial and military aircraft production. And the EU must keep up , so apparently they regard EBM as a core technology for the next generation of aircraft and jet engines .
The potential increase in EBM from the results of only the first project are mind boggling.
Fast EBM is completed but it will take several years to go from lab to mass production. The other two projects will show future benefits too.
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