From concept to reality: metal additive manufacturing in particle accelerator and storage ring R&D at GSI and for FAIR

Abstract State-of-the-art metal additive manufacturing technologies are finding increasingly widespread applications, from everyday life to scientific research. This advanced method eliminates many constraints of conventional processes in fabricating components with complex external shapes or intricate internal structures, thereby offering greater design flexibility for next-generation, high-efficiency particle accelerators and storage rings. The Stochastic Cooling Group at GSI, Germany, is among the early adopters of metal additive manufacturing for particle-accelerator and storage-ring R&D. Leveraging this method, two novel accelerating structures and a high-efficiency cooling plate for a future stochastic cooling system are under development at GSI and for the FAIR project. As the as-built surface quality of additively manufactured components remains inadequate for direct use in high‑performance applications, the adopted strategy incorporates an additional outer material allowance (typically about 1 mm) in the printed geometry, which is subsequently removed by precision post‑processing and, when necessary, followed by copper plating to achieve the desired final dimensions and RF surface properties. Our projects emphasize exploiting the design freedom allowed by additive manufacturing to develop tailored, high-efficiency cooling channels, while investigating alternative printing materials—including multi-material approaches—to maximize overall performance.