Properties of product from aluminum-magnesium alloy obtained by electron-beam additive manufacturing

Al-Mg alloys are susceptible to hot cracking, porosity and oxide film formation during additive manufacturing (AM). At the same time, vacuum technology avoids environmental influences and thus protects against the formation of oxide films. One of the known vacuum additive technologies is electron-beam AM, which efficiency is higher in comparison with laser additive technologies. The efficiency of electron-beam technology is explained by higher electron energy absorption by aluminum alloys, while the absorption of laser radiation is very low. In this work, electron-beam wire additive technology is applied to the AA5083 aluminum-magnesium alloy. The macrostructure of the produced specimen has been studied. It is shown that the microhardness along the building direction are not constant, but linearly decrease as the specimen grows. It is also shown that AA5083 alloy is very sensitive to energy investments in the electron beam printing process.