UKAEA appoints Kingsbury and Additure to provide Additive Manufacturing solutions for fusion energy research
May 20, 2025
Engineering equipment supplier Kingsbury, headquartered in Gosport, Hampshire, UK, and its subsidiary, Additure, have been appointed to provide Additive Manufacturing technology to the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to support its fusion energy research.
UKAEA is a national fusion energy research organisation and is an executive, non-departmental public body sponsored by the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. A crucial part of UKAEA’s work is building industrial fusion capability by informing and educating manufacturers and supply chains about the technologies required for fusion energy to be deployed at scale.
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As part of their research, the UKAEA has been experimenting with Additive Manufacturing to produce components with the required durability to withstand the intense environment within a fusion energy machine.
UKAEA is looking to utilise Additive Manufacturing for a novel application – developing tungsten material and layering this with other materials such as copper. UKAEA has appointed Kingsbury and Additure to install a Nikon SLM Solutions SLM 280 2.0 Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) machine.
Roy Marshall, Head of Operations for Fabrication, Installation and Maintenance at the UKAEA, shared, “Kingsbury and Additure offered their support in working with UKAEA to develop Additive Manufacturing as a manufacturing technology for complex geometry fusion components.”
“The UKAEA aims to develop the commercialisation of Additive Manufacturing and support UK industry in the transition into the fusion energy sector. We conduct the complex areas of research and development to the point where it becomes commercially viable, the advice and support of our supply chain is hugely valuable in expediting this process,” Marshall added.
Will Priest, Business Development Manager at Additure, commented, “We are excited to support the team at the UKAEA as they scale, not just with the SLM280’s LPBF capability, but with all the key elements of the AM ecosystem to make this a robust manufacturing solution for UKAEA and the UK’s fusion programme.”
The SLM 280 2.0 can support refractory metal development through to production. It achieves additive component build rates up to 80% faster than single-laser configurations and, thanks to a PSM powder sieve for depowering and system cooling, ensures operator safety.
To further assist the UKAEA’s ambitious efforts, Additure provided extensive training to the research, material, and design teams. This includes definitive application training on build setup, optimisation, and use of specific machine features, like the heated reduced build volume for small-volume manufacture of powder lots for quick development cycles.
“The applications training from Additure will provide our engineers with new ways to design some of the complex structures required by fusion and allow them to do this using some of the most challenging materials to work with,” said Marshall. “For additive manufacture to contribute to fusion energy, more designers need to think, ‘What process is most suitable for the desired thermal or structural performance?’ And ‘how do I create a design that is best optimised for additive manufacture?’”
