Energy-Saving Control Strategy of High-Voltage Power Supply for Electron Beam Melting

In the electron beam melting additive process, the energy consumption of the high-voltage power supply accounts for 40%-60% of the total energy consumption of the equipment. Traditional power supplies have problems such as high standby power consumption, poor load matching, and serious energy waste. The energy-saving control strategy needs to combine the phased characteristics of the melting process (standby, preheating, melting, cooling), and achieve the goal of reducing the total energy consumption by more than 20% through multi-condition energy consumption optimization, energy recovery, and intelligent scheduling.
Phased energy consumption optimization adapts to process requirements: in the standby phase, a deep sleep mode is adopted to cut off unnecessary circuits (such as sampling modules and communication modules), leaving only the core control circuit. The standby power consumption is reduced from the traditional 20W to below 5W. If the standby time exceeds 30 minutes, the high-voltage module is automatically turned off to further reduce energy consumption; in the preheating phase, the required energy is calculated according to the critical melting temperature of the material (such as 882℃ for titanium alloys and 1200℃ for superalloys), and a stepped voltage boosting strategy is adopted to gradually increase from 10kV to the target voltage (20-30kV), avoiding energy redundancy caused by one-time high-voltage output, and the energy consumption in the preheating phase is reduced by 15%; in the melting phase, load tracking control is adopted. By collecting the energy demand of the molten pool in real time (based on infrared temperature measurement and beam current feedback), the output power is dynamically adjusted. When the temperature of the molten pool is stable, the power is reduced to the minimum value to maintain melting (such as from 5kW to 3.5kW) to avoid excessive energy input, and the energy consumption in the melting phase is reduced by 25%; in the cooling phase, the waste heat from melting is used to preheat the powder for the next printing, and the power supply output power is reduced to below 1kW, and the energy consumption in the cooling phase is reduced by 30%.
Energy recovery technology reduces energy loss: under working conditions such as electron beam scanning direction switching and end of printing layer, the electron beam will generate feedback energy (such as inductor energy storage when the beam current decays). A bidirectional DC-DC converter is designed to recover the feedback energy to the power supply energy storage capacitor (recovery efficiency ≥85%) for the next high-voltage output, with an annual recovered energy of 500-800kWh; for the internal energy consumption of the power supply, high-efficiency heat dissipation technology (such as heat pipe heat dissipation instead of fan heat dissipation) is adopted to reduce the energy consumption of the heat dissipation system (from 10W to 3W), and the circuit topology is optimized (such as LLC resonant topology instead of hard-switching topology) to increase the power conversion efficiency from 85% to more than 92%, reducing internal energy loss.
Intelligent scheduling realizes global energy saving: an energy consumption-process database is established to store the optimal energy consumption parameters of different materials and component types. For example, when printing titanium alloy thin-walled parts, the recommended output voltage is 22kV and current is 25mA, and the energy consumption is 20% lower than that of traditional parameters; an equipment collaborative scheduling algorithm is developed. When multiple additive equipment share the same power supply system, the power supply power is allocated according to the equipment working status (standby, melting, cooling) to avoid energy peaks caused by simultaneous high-power output. For example, when two devices need melting, the maximum power is alternately allocated in chronological order, and the energy peak is reduced by 30%; in addition, a time-of-use power supply strategy is adopted to use the grid valley period (such as 23:00-7:00) for high-energy-consuming melting printing. The valley period electricity price is lower, and the power supply pressure during the grid peak period is avoided, and the comprehensive operating cost is reduced by 15%.
The energy-saving effect is verified through practical applications: after an electron beam melting additive production line adopts this strategy, the average daily energy consumption of a single device is reduced from 80kWh to 62kWh, saving 6570kWh annually; when multiple devices operate collaboratively, the energy consumption peak is reduced from 15kW to 10.5kW, and the grid load pressure is significantly reduced. This energy-saving control strategy not only reduces production costs, but also meets the requirements of green manufacturing development, providing a technical path for the low-carbon application of electron beam melting additive technology.