Electrical resistivity of additively manufactured silicon steel for electrical machine fabrication

Abstract

Additive manufacturing, commonly labeled as 3D printing is an essential component of the next industrial revolution, enabling both unprecedented fabrication freedom and streamlined production and logistics. Traditionally, the electrical machine cores are stacked from varnished soft magnetic laminations, which deliver reduced eddy and hysteresis losses during machine operation. Presently, dedicated metal printing platforms can produce industrial grade homo-material metal components, promoting the fabrication of machines with highly complex topologies, but also increasing the eddy current induced in these components, due to lack of laminated structure. In this paper, we present experimental resistivity measurement results of 3% and 6.5% silicon content steel fabricated with selective laser melting.