Reliance Rg Limited

Other

William Thomas Richardson

Ian Laidler

Hoyle Phil

Liam Blunt

Andrew McClelland

Laidler Ian

Additive layer manufacturing apparatus utilizing a housing, which bounds a vacuum chamber and has a window for monitoring a region of the chamber in which additive layer manufacturing is to be carried out, and an electron beam column for generating an electron beam and transmitting the beam through the chamber to the region for action on successive layers of fusible powder material, particularly metallic material, to produce an article therefrom. In order to combat the problem of deposition on the window of metal material escaping from the layer as gaseous phase constituents with a boiling point below the melting point of the material, an optical element is arranged in the chamber to intercept such liberated gaseous phase constituents, which in a vacuum environment in the chamber travel along an optical path between the region and the window, and optical element heating means substantially preventing condensation of the intercepted constituents.

Additive layer manufacturing apparatus with process monitoring facility

A computer-implemented method of generating scan instructions for forming a product using additive layer manufacture as a series of layers is provided. The method comprises determining a beam acceleration voltage to be used when forming the product; for each hatch area of layers of the product, determining a respective beam current to be used when forming the hatch area and providing a respective beam current value to the hatch area description in the scan pattern instruction file; and for each line of each hatch area, determining a respective beam spot size to be used when scanning the beam along the line and providing a respective beam spot size value to the line description in the scan pattern instruction file, and determining a respective series of beam step sizes and beam step dwell times to be used when scanning the beam along the line, and providing a respective series of beam position values and beam step dwell times to the line description in the scan pattern instruction file thereby defining how the beam is to be scanned along the line. Also provided are a file of scan instructions, an additive layer manufacture apparatus, and a method of forming a product using the additive layer manufacturing apparatus.

Charged particle beam control during additive layer manufacture

A method of additive layer manufacture includes the steps of successively depositing layers of fusible powder material in overlying relationship and introducing energy, such as by an electron beam, into each deposited layer to selectively melt material in the layer so as to fuse the melted material together and to already fused material of a layer thereunder in order to produce a three-dimensional solid article in successive cross-sectional layers. In order to monitor layer quality, structured light defining a fringe pattern is projected onto each deposited layer before and/or after melting of material in that layer and the fringe pattern on each layer is imaged from a perspective different from that of the projection so as to reveal disturbance of the pattern by topographical features of the layer.

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West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

William Thomas Richardson