/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6577190
>>6577080
This better process is called Electron Beam Melting or EBM for short. In EBM one uses an electron beam instead of a laser to MELT and not sinter metal power. This has the advantage that electron beams can be scanned really fucking fast and that electron beams are very efficient at heating things up.

An EBM machine takes around the same amount of energy to make the same object from TITANIUM as a Laser Sintering(LS) machine takes to make said object from PLASTIC. That's how inefficient lasers are.

Now as a bonus, because the electron beam can be scanned really fast, one can prevent the thermal stress problem encountered with DMLS, so one doesn't need supports!

Here's a really cool video of an electron beam doing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqa3TMxje14

Notice how everything is scanned before it starts melting stuff? It's heating everything up uniformly to prevent thermal stress.

And with EBM you don't need exotic laser diodes, just an electron gun, which in some cases is just a heated piece of wire.

Of course you do need a vacuum to do it, but this raises some interesting possibilities.

You could essentially do electron beam melting 'outdoors' on the Moon, the vacuum is more than good enough there.

In addition, the Moon has a 'FREE' supply of easily extractable metallic powder one could use as feedstock.

On the Moon IRON, not iron oxide, exist as tiny particles in lunar regolith. By simply passing magnets over regolith, one can extract it. Sure the particles are all jagged, which is bad because it makes spreading our powder hard, but this is easily solved with some ball milling.

In other words, in two simple steps you can make 3d printer feed stock on the Moon.