First Light Fusion improves Pressure Amplifier production with AM

First Light Fusion, a UK-based inertial fusion company, have reported a breakthrough in the manufacture of its flagship Pressure Amplifier: for the first time, tantalum components made via additive manufacturing have been shown to match the performance of traditionally machined components under shock compression up to pressures of five million atmospheres, enabling a faster, lower-cost production path. Their results have just been published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

The implications are profound for First Light: to date, Pressure Amplifier devices have been manufactured from tantalum blocks using hard machinery, including drills and mills, which is very labor-intensive. This successful study means First Light will be able to deploy a faster, cheaper, and more productive way of manufacturing its amplifier technology.

To produce the additively manufactured materials, First Light has partnered with Croom Medical, an Irish medical device company specializing in the 3D printing of tantalum via laser powder-bed fusion. Using their TALOS laser-powder-bed-fusion process, Croom Medical can produce fully dense, ultra-pure, metallic components (like First Light’s amplifier) that are difficult and labor-intensive to manufacture using traditional methods.

This breakthrough is critical to the company’s mission – leveraging its technology, which it has developed in pursuit of fusion energy, to answer other real-world problems in industries such as space travel, defence, and materials science.

First Light has recently built upon this success and conducted its first fully integrated tests of additively manufactured amplifiers at its two-stage light gas gun test facility in Yarnton, Oxford. The high-impact results will be published in the coming months.

“3D printing tantalum gives us a reliable, cost-effective path to mass-produce our amplifiers – unlocking wide-ranging applications outside of inertial fusion, from materials research to defence,” said Martin Gorman, Lead Shock Scientist at First Light Fusion.

“We’re proud and excited to support First Light Fusion by applying our recently launched TALOS additive manufacturing platform to such a groundbreaking application. Tantalum is an exceptionally challenging material to process, and this project demonstrates how our technology can unlock its full potential in cutting-edge applications where high-performance in extremely high-pressure environments is required,” said Shane Keaveney, R&D Manager at Croom Medical.