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GE Additive entered into a five-year cooperative research and development agreement with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), to investigate processes, materials and software to drive industrialization and encourage broader adoption of additive manufacturing technology.
This supersedes an existing agreement between ORNL and GE Additive Arcam EBM, signed in 2012. ORNL purchased its first Arcam EBM system in 2009 for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since then, ORNL and Arcam EBM teams worked together to create opportunities for companies in multiple U.S. manufacturing sectors to adopt electron beam melting technology (EBM).
The research objectives with Arcam EBM focused on improving the process reliability of EBM through in situ process monitoring and closed loop control; expanding the technology to new materials systems, specifically Nickel-based superalloys, and validating microstructure and properties of Titanium Ti-6Al-4V materials fabricated with increased deposition rate.
The new agreement, which includes all GE Additive equipment, materials and engineering services capabilities, focuses on developing and implementing novel additive technologies into commercial products such as:
- Building on existing research into process simulation methodologies and in situ monitoring and quality control, on both EBM and direct metal laser melting systems
- Materials modeling and development
- Industrialization and commercialization of equipment and processes
“Our pioneering research with GE Additive was essential to resolving scientific challenges in advanced metals manufacturing using new electron beam methods,” said Moe Khaleel, Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environmental Sciences at ORNL. “We’re excited to again push the boundaries with GE and lower the barriers for widespread adoption of more efficient, low-cost manufacturing techniques.”
