ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OF PURE COPPER USING ELECTRON BEAM MELTING (EBM)

Sammanfattning: Pure copper (Cu) has the properties of high optical reflectivity and surface tarnishing as well as excellent thermal and electrical conductivity. Accordingly, laser-based additive manufacturing (AM) techniques confront various difficulties to produce thismaterial. In contrast, the electron beam melting (EBM) process is paving to become an excellent method to manufacture AM parts from such materials. This is since theelectron beam is not influenced by the optical reflectivity of the material. Furthermore, EBM works under vacuum that can protect the powder material from oxidization. In addition, the high working temperature and preheating process for each layer canensure a uniform heat input and a much lower cooling rate. Hence, the EBM processcan significantly prevent the parts from delamination failure caused by residual stress. Accordingly, this research work is intended to investigate the EBM processability and geometrical freedom/accuracy of EBM made copper components. The 99.95% pure Cu powder with a particle size range of 45-100μm are used to produce samples. All the samples are built with a certain layer thickness of 50μm with altering parameters, including the processing temperature, line offset, focus offset, beamspeed, and beam current. It is found that the processing temperature of 500°C leadsto low density and severe lateral melting/sintering. Accordingly, the temperature is lowered to 450°C, 400°C, 350°C, and 310°C to control the excessive lateral melting. Since dense parts could only be produced above 400°C, this work focuses on developing 400°C processing temperature with different line offset, focus offset, beamspeed, and beam current. However, it is observed that the processing window of the EBM process is rather narrow, too high or too low energy input could both result in a porous part with severe distortion. After many experimental optimizations runs, the combination of the optimum parameters is reached which can deliver parts with over 99% density and a good geometrical stability. After optimization, the benchmark partsare designed and manufactured according to electrical and thermal applications (using the optimum parameters). Afterwards, the corresponding geometrical freedomand accuracy of the copper components made by EBM is assessed and discussed.