Fabrication of Beads Using a Plasma Electron Beam and Stellite21 Powders for Additive Manufacturing

The aim of this paper was to investigate the feasibility of the fabrication of a bead using a plasma electron beam and Stellite21 powder for the development of a novel metal additive manufacturing (AM) process. A proper preheating scheme was examined to prevent spreading of supplied powders via the preheating experiments. From the results of preheating experiments, the preheated plate was fabricated without preheating of the base plate. The deposition bead was created at room temperature through deposition experiments. The influence of the acceleration voltage on the formation, the morphology and the hardness of the bead was discussed. Considering high temperature conditions of an electron beam melting process, it was noted that the newly designed process can reduce the applied energy and the thermal impact of metal AM processes using electron beams for small and thin parts.