Western Vacuum's EBM Technology Achieves Breakthrough: Enables High-Density Pure Copper 3D Printing with over 99.5% Density

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September 25, 2025 Materials 162

Copper and Copper Alloy Products as Core Conductive and Thermal Materials

Pure copper and copper alloy sample parts prepared by XKonic's electron beam printing

Copper and copper alloy products, serving as core conductive and thermal materials, are widely used in fields such as electronic information, automotive, power, heat dissipation, aerospace, and new energy. With the rapid growth of these industries, the demand for complex structural components is increasing year by year. Traditional processing techniques can no longer meet these demands, leading to growing interest in 3D printing of pure copper and copper alloy complex components.

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) Technology

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is a metal manufacturing technology developed in the 1990s. It operates in a vacuum environment, using a high-energy electron beam to melt metal powder, building components layer by layer. This technology offers significant advantages, including high energy density, low forming stress, high energy absorption rate, fast scanning speed, and the vacuum environment itself. It is particularly suitable for forming hard, brittle, and refractory materials like titanium aluminides, tungsten, and tungsten alloys. Furthermore, it achieves an absorption rate of over 90% for highly reflective materials such as copper, gold, silver, magnesium, and aluminum, showing broad application prospects in aerospace, defense, biomedical, and automotive sectors.

Compared to Selective Laser Melting (SLM), EBM offers higher energy utilization efficiency and better melt depth for forming pure copper and copper alloy complex components, making it a key focus area in direct 3D printing.

I. Challenges in Forming Pure Copper and Copper Alloys using Selective Laser Melting (SLM)

High Reflectivity: Copper has extremely high reflectivity (around 95%) towards infrared lasers (e.g., common 1064nm wavelength fiber lasers). This means most laser energy is reflected rather than absorbed for melting the powder, leading to low energy utilization, insufficient heat input, unstable processes, and difficulty in forming, especially for high-purity copper.

Damage to Laser Optics: The high reflectivity of copper can cause severe damage to the optical mirrors of laser galvanometers and the processing chamber, making large-scale production challenging.

II. Advantages of Forming Pure Copper and Copper Alloys using Electron Beam Melting (EBM)

Low Reflectivity Impact: The electron beam is a stream of charged particles, unaffected by optical reflectivity. It can transfer energy very efficiently into the copper powder, resulting in high energy utilization, sufficient heat input, and high product density, enabling a stable and controllable melting process suitable for processing high-reflectivity materials like copper.

High Vacuum: The EBM process occurs entirely in a high vacuum environment (approximately 10⁻³ Pa). This prevents oxidation of pure copper or copper alloy powder at high temperatures, ensuring very low impurity and oxygen content in the powder. The same batch of powder can be reused multiple times.

Low Residual Stress: The layer-by-layer preheating characteristic of EBM significantly reduces residual stress caused by rapid heating and cooling during printing, effectively preventing part deformation and cracking. This results in components with good internal quality and high yield rates, making it particularly suitable for printing large or structurally complex copper parts.

High Forming Efficiency: Electron beam power can typically reach several kilowatts, enabling rapid melting of copper powder. Additionally, electron beam deflection speed is extremely fast, far exceeding the scanning speed of laser galvanometers. This allows for significantly increased printing speeds, especially advantageous for mass-producing large, dense components.

Excellent Properties: EBM-formed pure copper and copper alloy components exhibit high purity, high density, and excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, achieving performance combinations difficult to reach with traditional methods.

High Design Freedom: EBM can manufacture lightweight, functionally integrated copper components with complex internal channels and lattice structures, which are challenging to produce using conventional machining methods.

Comparison of EBM and SLM for Forming Copper and Copper Alloy Components

III. Applications of EBM for Forming Pure Copper and Copper Alloys

Electric Drives - Motor Windings: 3D printed motor windings offer higher design freedom, allowing for greater copper content within slots. This can improve thermal coupling in the windings, effectively reduce rotor losses in electric motors, and improve motor efficiency.

Typical 3D Printed Additively Manufactured Motor Winding

Advanced Thermal Management - Heat Sinks, Nozzles: 3D printed heat sinks and heat exchangers benefit from higher design freedom, potentially doubling cooling effectiveness while reducing weight by approximately 20% and improving efficiency by about 20%. 3D printed combustion chambers and nozzles can be designed as single integrated components, achieving higher cooling performance while reducing part count and assembly requirements.

Typical 3D Printed Additively Manufactured Heat Sink

Typical 3D Printed Additively Manufactured Combustion Chamber and Nozzle

Potential Application - Induction Coils: 3D printed induction coils can be formed integrally, eliminating manual bending and welding. This avoids issues like fatigue cracking caused by welding, significantly enhancing service life and stability. The higher design freedom allows for optimized geometry, improving electrical and thermal conductivity.

Typical 3D Printed Additively Manufactured Induction Coil

Progress in Pure Copper and Copper Alloy Printing by XKonic (Western Vacuum Intelligent Manufacturing)

Xi'an Kongtian Intelligent Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (XKonic) is a technology innovation enterprise focused on intelligent 3D printing for components in aerospace power, new energy power, and other sectors. It positions itself as a provider of aerospace power components and intelligent additive manufacturing equipment. The company refers to its intelligent additive manufacturing as "i-3D," aiming to highlight the evolution of 3D printing from digital manufacturing to intelligent digital manufacturing. XKonic has independently developed and advanced intelligent processes described as the "Three Intelligent Prints": Intelligent Laser-Peening Printing, Intelligent Laser/Arc Hybrid Printing, and Intelligent Electron Beam Spot Printing. Leveraging these advanced processes, XKonic provides breakthrough solutions for the high-performance and low-cost manufacturing of key engine components in the aerospace power field, effectively contributing to solving critical technological challenges ("bottleneck" problems) in this sector.

XKonic utilizes Electron Beam Melting (EBM) technology to directly print pure copper and copper alloy components. Test specimens printed by XKonic using EBM exhibit excellent comprehensive properties: density ≥ 99.5%, tensile strength ≥ 165 MPa, yield strength ≥ 76 MPa, electrical conductivity ≥ 99% IACS, and thermal conductivity ≥ 400 W/(m·K).