E-Beam Deposition Rapid Prototyping Tech Used for Fighters

It is reported that the manufacturing of China's J-15 has adopted some new technologies to reduce the weight of the aircraft. One of them is called electron beam deposition rapid prototyping technology.

The essence of this technology is to coat the components with titanium thin films. In a vacuum environment, a high energy density electron beam bombards the surface of the titanium material to form a molten pool, and the metal wire is sent to the molten pool through the wire feeding device and melted, while the molten pool moves according to a pre-planned path, and the material is solidified layer by layer to form a dense metallurgical bond until a metal part or blank is produced.

Its advantage is that the large metal structure has a high molding speed, good internal quality of the components, and can realize multifunctional and complex processing. Compared with traditional aerospace metal processing, this technology can reduce the weight and cost of titanium components, and achieve direct and rapid manufacturing of large and complex metal parts to achieve optimal efficiency.

LMT (Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company) uses electron beam deposition rapid prototyping technology to build the ailerons and other components of F-35 fighter, reducing the costs by 30% to 60%. In addition, the US Navy also selected this technology as a low-cost and efficient manufacturing solution for large-scale structures in the future. This time, the technology realized the application of manufacturing titanium alloy parts on the J-15, and contributed to the reduction of weight and manufacturing cost. In the field of fighters, a gram of weight equals one gram of gold, so this weight reduction can save nearly 100 million yuan for the comprehensive use cost of each J-15 fighter!

The new generation of aircraft is constantly developing towards high performance, high reliability, long life and low cost. More and more integrated structures are used, and parts are becoming more complicated and large-sized, thus promoting the development and application of 3D additive manufacturing technology such as electron beam deposition.