Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Tungsten component produced by 3D printing using electron beam melting. (Photo: Markus Breig, KIT)
Tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals, 3,422 degrees Celsius. This makes the material ideal for use at high temperatures in e.g. space rocket nozzles, heating elements of high-temperature furnaces, or the fusion reactor. However, the metal is highly brittle and, hence, difficult to process. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed an innovative approach to making this brittle material soft. To process tungsten, they have determined new process parameters for electron beam melting.
Tungsten is a metal with very attractive properties: It is corrosion-resistant and as heavy as gold. In the form of tungsten carbide, it is as hard as diamond. And it has the highest melting point of all metals, 3,422 degrees Celsius. However, the metal is highly brittle at room temperature. Due to its properties, tungsten is difficult to process using conventional methods. Processing is expensive and time-consuming. An alternative is 3D printing that allows to produce tungsten components that require hardly any finishing. “At the moment, we are working on the additive manufacture of tungsten components by electron beam melting, EBM for short,” says Dr. Steffen Antusch from the Institute for Applied Materials – Materials Science and Engineering (IAM-WK) of KIT. The team succeeded in adapting the EBM process to tungsten. Having developed specific process parameters, 3D printing of tungsten components is now possible. “This metal can be applied in many areas. Thanks to its special properties, it is ideally suited for high-temperature applications in energy and light technologies, aerospace industry, and medical engineering. It is indispensable in modern high-tech industry,” says Alexander Klein, IAM-WK.