Melt pool dynamics during selective electron beam melting

Electron beam melting is a promising additive manufacturing technique for metal parts. Nevertheless, the process is still poorly understood making further investigations indispensable to allow a prediction of the part's quality. To improve the understanding of the process especially the beam powder interaction, process observation at the relevant time scale is necessary. Due to the difficult accessibility of the building area, the high temperatures, radiation and the very high scanning speeds during the melting process the observation requires an augmented effort in the observation equipment. A high speed camera in combination with an illumination laser, band pass filter and mirror system is suitable for the observation of the electron beam melting process. The equipment allows to observe the melting process with a high spatial and temporal resolution. In this paper the adjustment of the equipment and results of the lifetime and the oscillation frequencies of the melt pool for a simple geometry are presented.