(6e) On Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing Process for Titanium Alloys

Aircraft manufacturing cost and cycle times are adversely affected by titanium forgings. Additive manufacturing of titanium structural parts has the potential to reduce lead and cycle times, work in process, and the amount of titanium required to produce structural parts. Spares can be produced during small production runs and to produce prototypes where tooling or conventional manufacturing costs would be prohibitive. Advanced electron additive manufacturing, eBAM techniques and control processes to effect flight worthy titanium alloy structural aerospace components is evaluated in this study. Sensors needed for closed loop control of teh deposition parameters critical to the quality of the component are designed. A detalied case study is shown where eBAM solution is optimized and are competetive with existing titanium forging process in terms of cost, quality, lead and cycle times, WIP, etc.

A manufacturing process development plan, feasibility study, of using eBAM processes are presented. The MPD includes progress and completion performance goals and transition plan to a production partner. Scale-up, optimization and demonstration issues of representative components are discussed. How much better are eBAM parts compared with forged parts that can be produced at similar or better rates is outlined. There is a tutorial on electron beam welding at http://sbirsttrmall.com/Library/Default.aspx