Avio Aero came to the Paris air show with good news on the technology front, having just seen some of its 3D-printed low-pressure jet engine turbine blades through 2,800 test cycles on its Genx test bed at Naples.
Chief executive Riccardo Procacci says that – as expected – they “worked perfectly”. And, he adds, he is “confident to see them flying soon”.
The additive layer manufacturing (ALM) process behind those blades is an Avio specialty. Since the Turin-headquartered aero engine components maker was acquired by GE Aviation in August 2013 for $4.3 billion it has been the focus of a steady drive by both parent and subsidiary to bring ALM technologies to commercial fruition.
The pair are, conveniently, far down the development path in complementary versions of ALM; while GE has been developing a relatively low temperature process call laser sintering – attractive for giving a fine surface finish direct from the printer, and producing fuel nozzles and high-pressure blades for CFM Leap engines – Avio has been working on higher-temperature electron beam melting (EBM), ideally suited to making parts out of hard metals such as titanium.
“The two companies really fit together,” says Procacci.
But while these examples of printed components should be just the first of many to come, Procacci notes that it is still “so early” in the development of ALM that “we need to think exponentially. We are still not equipped to think where this technology will take us in the future.”
3D printing promises to bust open new ideas about design and manufacturing, by allowing engineers to radically reduce weight by working with shapes that are impossible or impractical to make by traditional “subtractive” methods.
In the near term, though, Avio expects to begin industrial production of EBM-printed low-pressure blades in 2016 – from start to finish, the process is faster than traditional forging and machining, and creates much less waste – while the company is also starting to look at other parts suitable for the process, for example gear box housings.
Meanwhile, Avio's EBM capability is a “technical enabler” of the in-development GE9X, whose titanium-aluminium low-pressure blades need to be EBM-printed to be competitive, says Procacci. The GE9X programme is proceeding well, he says: “As Avio Aero, we are part of that success.”
Source: Flight Daily News
