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U.K. company Wayland Additive, spun out from engineering firm Reliance Precision, licensed the metal AM NeuBeam process from its parent company with an aim to commercialize it by 2021. This goal will soon become a reality, as Wayland has announced a major milestone — it will be commercially launching the Calibur 3, its first production NeaBeam 3D printing system, on January 27th of 2021.

“We are very happy to confirm the launch date for the Calibur 3,” Peter Hansford, the Director of Business Development for Wayland Additive, stated in a press release. “On 27th January next year we will be unveiling the full specs of the machine to our early adopters and partners as well as to the press at a dedicated event. Currently the plan is to bring people in to see it in action for themselves if we are able to with Covid 19 restrictions, but we will also be live-streaming the event for interested parties that may not be able to attend. 2020 has been an unprecedented year in many ways and the global pandemic has caused a great deal of disruption and uncertainty. At Wayland, however, we have been able to navigate through these difficulties and keep our focus on the development of our system. Talking to industrial users of metal AM throughout, it is clear that despite the disruptions, many companies are still making medium and long-term plans, and we look forward to serving them with our ground-breaking technology.”

NeuBeam metal AM technology is an electron beam powder bed fusion (PBF) process, and was created from the ground up, by a team of in-house physicists, in order to negate most of the compromises made when using metal 3D printing for part production. The process can actually neutralize the charge accumulation you normally see with electron beam melting (EBM), which enables more flexibility. The creators used physics principles learned in the semiconductor sector to come up with this unique method, which, as the press release states, is able to overcome “the inherent instabilities of traditional eBeam processes,” along with the typical internal residual stresses that occur with PBF technologies.

Wayland’s NeuBeam technology can print fully dense parts in many different materials, including highly reflective alloys and refractory metals, which are not compatible with traditional laser PBF and eBeam processes; this results in much better metallurgy capabilities. NeuBeam is also a hot “part” process, instead of a hot “bed” process, as it applies high temperatures to the part only, and not the bed. This allows for free-flowing post-build powder and stress-free parts with less energy consumption, which makes for more efficient part printing.

The soon-to-launch Calibur 3 printer is an open system, and was specifically designed by Wayland to be used for production applications. That’s why the company made sure to add completely embedded in-process print monitoring to the system’s features, which allow users to enjoy full oversight during the process and rest easy knowing each part has full traceability.

“Save the date in your diary now. We are in the process of curating an impressive in-person and on-line event which will be of huge interest to industrial sectors that use or are planning to use metal AM for production applications,” said Will Richardson, Wayland Additive’s CEO. “January 27th 2021 will be a pivotal day for Wayland, but also a pivotal day for industry as they get a first clear view of the opportunities that exist through the use of our NeuBeam technology.”

NeuBeam technology

Wayland has said that it plans to start shipping the Calibur 3 to customers later in 2021.

(Source/Images: Wayland Additive)

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After several years of research and development, Wayland Additive is now showcasing its new electron beam powder bed fusion (PBF) process dubbed NeuBeam. The U.K. company claims that its tech has numerous advantages over other metal PBF processes, including both laser PBF and other electron beam systems.

The company was spun out of Reliance Precision, a roughly 100-year-old engineering firm that relied on a series of Innovate UK grants to develop a new form of electron beam PBF based on processes related to electron microscopy and electron beam lithography. Licensing the technology from Reliance, Wayland is now in the process of commercializing its NeuBeam technology with the goal of delivering machines to six customers by 2021.

Parts printed by NeuBeam, without the formation of a “sinter cake”. Image courtesy of Wayland Additive.

Wayland CEO Will Richardson suggests that, using principles developed from the semi-conductor industry, NeuBeam is able to neutralize the charge accumulation that occurs with traditional electron beam PBF (hence the “neu” in NeuBeam), thus broadening the printing parameters of the system. The result is greater stability for electron beam PBF overall and opening up more flexibility than found with laser PBF. In turn, a wider range of materials can be used with NeuBeam than with other PBF processes.

Richardson describes NeuBeam as “a hot part process rather than a hot bed process,” in that heat is applied only to the part being printed and not to the whole bed. Instead of generating a “sinter cake” associated with electron beam PBF processes, Wayland’s technology allows for the free flowing of powder once the build is complete, reducing the amount of post-processing required, reduced energy consumption and, the company claims, parts free from residual stress. By eliminating thermal stresses, as well as gas crossflow, and by simplifying powder removal, Wayland suggests that much larger parts can be made than with traditional electron beam technology.

Geometric complexity offered by NeuBeam 3D printing. Image courtesy of Wayland Additive.

As a newer metal PBF company, Wayland Additive has jumped ahead of the stalwarts of the industry by introducing real-time in-process monitoring from the start, using structured light scanning, electron imaging and high speed infra-red cameras. This can be used to adapt the system during the printing process to tune microstructures as the part is being built. This also aids in material development, as the parameters can be changed on the fly for metal-specific optimization.

Electron beam PBF has been primed for new advancements for some time, with very few competitors in the field. The primary manufacturer of electron beam PBF systems is Arcam, now a subsidiary of GE Additive, whose electron beam melting (EBM) technology has been the standard bearer for electron beam PBF since the company first began selling systems in 2001.

However, the technology has been limited due to the reasons mentioned above and more. The charge accumulation that NeuBeam addresses, for instance, causes powder scattering and “smoke events” that distort printed layers when they occur and thus damage the entire part. Breaking up the layer cake and removing unused powder is an arduous process that necessitates the use of coarse materials to limit the risk of explosion when bead blasting parts. All of this limits the metals that can beeasily printed with the technology, mostly titanium alloys and cobalt chrome. In turn, Arcam itself has targeted just two industries with EBM, aerospace and medical implants.

More recently, however, new entrants like Wayland Additive are beginning to offer alternatives. In addition to a Chinese company called Xi’an Sailong Metals, JEOL , a Japanese maker of electron-beam based metrology and inspection technologies, is working with the Japanese Technology Research Association for Future Additive Manufacturing to develop an electron beam process.

This will certainly make the electron beam PBF market more interesting and will likely provide further competition for laser PBF companies that dominate the market, like EOS. And, because Wayland has reportedly developed methods for overcoming EBM’s drawbacks, there’s no doubt that GE is attempting to do the same.

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