Review on metals additively manufactured by SEBM

Selective electron beam melting (SEBM) is a typical powder bed fusion based additive manufacturing (AM) technology. Compared with other AM technologies for metals, SEBM offers two distinct advantages: high vacuum environment and low residual stresses. Since the appearance of the technique in 1992, a number of strong improvements have been made to SEBM, and a wide variety of metallic materials have been processed and evaluated. To date, SEBM has proved to be competent in the manufacturing of complex metallic parts with excellent mechanical properties. As a result, it is being increasingly adopted by industry. However, from the point of research and industrial applications, the fundamental research of the technique is not enough and theoretical study of the metallurgical process is of particular importance. Meanwhile, developing advanced systems, new structures and alloys special for SEBM should be important for the future development.