Electron beam additive manufacturing at the Nuclear AMRC

Abstract

The Nuclear AMRC was established in the UK as an arm of the University of Sheffield to support industry and secure contracts in the nuclear sector – a wide scope of activities including nuclear new build, plant operations and decommissioning & waste management systems. One of the key goals is to work with industry partners in reducing unit cost, fabrication time, and risk associated with traditional manufacturing processes, whilst also striving to improve quality and engage with the industry regulators. The Nuclear AMRC’s facility was designed to accommodate large component development programmes and is capable of producing demonstrator components, using an array of state-of-the-art fabrication & manufacturing solutions. Acknowledging the great potential of electron beam welding (EBW) for modern manufacturing the Nuclear AMRC operates 2 EBW facilities. One of them is the largest electron beam facility in the UK, with a vacuum chamber volume of 208 m3, allowing EBW of large scale components as required for nuclear manufacturing. The mobile 30 kW, 60 kV gun is attached to an x-y-z gantry via two rotary axes. These axes together with turn and tilt tables are all CNC controlled allowing a very flexible approach for welding of parts up to 100 tons with sizes up to 6 x 4 x 3 metres. In addition two wire feeders are attached to the gun opening the facility to additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing achieves increasingly more acceptance for industrial applications. Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing (EBAM) exhibits a very efficient, high power energy source which easily couples with metals promising one of the highest deposition rates for all metal additive manufacturing technologies. The processing in high vacuum is ideal for reactive alloys. CNC is standard for most of the EBW set-ups allowing easy application of an automated build strategy. This paper aims to present EBAM builds realised at the Nuclear AMRC demonstrating the ability to achieve complex structures for different materials