Self-supporting overhang structures produced by additive manufacturing through electron beam melting

The aim of this study is to identify the limitations of self-supporting structures and evaluate the deformations associated with overhang structures fabricated without support structures. To achieve these objectives, a series of experiments involving different overhang geometries were designed, fabricated, and evaluated. The formation of defects during the fabrication of overhanging structures is detailed, and the self-supporting limits for different overhangs are established. A segmentation strategy for the support structure addition is proposed and evaluated in different configurations for ledge overhangs to reduce the amount of support structures without affecting the overhang accuracy. Based on the inferences of this study, design rules are proposed for producing overhang structures through electron beam melting. The results identified the self-supporting limits for different overhang geometries. In addition, the proposed segmentation strategy for support generation in ledge overhangs resulted in reduction of support structure materials and post-processing time without any effect on the quality of the fabricated overhang.