TABLE OF CONTENTS The earliest applications of the electron beam result from the work completed by K.-H. Steigerwald in Germany and by J.A. Stohr at the CEA (Atomic Energy Commission) in France. For the latter, this work was justified for the welding of combustible material casings made of zirconium alloy, a material very sensitive to oxidation and for which there did not exist, at that time, a suitable welding process. The production of an electron beam required vacuum conditions which naturally gave protection against oxidation. Thus, welding was made possible and the first EB welds were obtained using a focused electron beam produced by a Guinier cathode system. A patent was thus declared in 1956 and licenses granted to companies for the construction of machines, which appeared on the market in 1960.
The first machines had low power electron beam guns (a few kilowatts), which limited the thicknesses that could be welded to approximately ten millimeters. Very quickly, the gun power that could be increased (30 kW in 1970), which made it possible to consider the welding of very thick parts (40 to 50 mm) encountered in boiler manufacturing or heavy engineering.
During the 1980s, new applications were sought, with more than 1,000 machines being built in Western Europe between 1980 and the end of the 20 th century.
The process of EB welding uses the energy dissipated by electrons at the moment they strike the part to be welded.
