Identification on Some Design Key Parameters for Additive Manufacturing: Application on Electron Beam Melting

Abstract Additive manufacturing (AM) consists in building parts from scratch, usually by stacking layers onto one another. Mostly used for rapid prototyping purposes, several AM processes can use metallic alloys which makes the rapid manufacture of end-use parts possible. Many researches are conducted to improve the manufacturing rate, to assess the environmental impact or to study the mechanical properties of test parts manufactured by such processes. In spite of the large number of studies, there is yet to be a designing methodology to take advantage of these processes. The formalization of the manufacturing capabilities and manufacturing constraints that these processes have has especially hardly been conducted. In this paper we investigate the manufacturing constraints of the Electron Beam Melting process, a metallic additive manufacturing process in order to issue recommendations to the designers. We will review the principle of Electron Beam Melting and look at the manufacturing capabilities designers are offered. Then we will focus on some key manufacturing constraints, the powder removing and the necessity of supporting structures. At last, we will give some recommendations regarding these two topics to take advantage of this process from the designing stage of a part.