“We really believe [additive] is the future of aerospace technology,” Renee Begley, Director and General Manager at Collins Aerospace told TCT during a conversation about its latest machine installation.
The aerospace engineering and manufacturing company has been investing in additive manufacturing (AM) technologies at its site in West Des Moines, Iowa since 2016, and last year solidified its commitment with the opening of a 14 million USD expansion to its AM activity. A year earlier, it launched another AM centre at its multi-million-dollar campus in Monroe, North Carolina. That future, for the RTX business it seems, is very much in sight.
“There are so many different benefits that it gives to our customers,” Begley explained, offering examples of lead time reduction, unique design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) freedoms and part consolidation that it now wants to make readily available to its customers across the aerospace gamut.
“We do a lot of brazing and welding and when you design for additive manufacturing, you're able to eliminate some of those braze joints and weld joints,” Begley elaborated on the technology’s unique value. “There are some designs that you can only do additively, and we're able to design unique, complex features to meet our customers’ needs.”
Collins Aerospace’s additive journey at its West Des Moines site started out like a lot of large engineering organisations, with a modest single laser powder bed fusion system. But in the space of just two years, the company was able to conceptualise and ship its first production component and eventually grow its fleet to three single-laser printers and in-house auxiliary equipment, allowing it to go from file to finished printed part within its own 9,000 square foot capacity.
“We've continued to advance the technology,” Begley said, “and we're really excited to continue to grow our different capabilities.”
Indeed, those capabilities have grown, with bigger build sizes and more laser power, two factors, alongside material capabilities, which Begley tells us have been key to the AM adoption decision making at Collins Aerospace in recent years, and made its installation of Nikon SLM Solutions’ 12-laser NXG XII 600 back in 2022 a no brainer.
“The build volume gave us eight times the volume of our current capability with the single lasers. That was really important for us,” Begley said. “Looking at the parts that we're manufacturing and then with the 12 lasers, that was the technology that was on the market that enticed us.”
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Collins Aerospace was one of the first 10 companies to invest in the technology as the trend for more lasers inside powder bed systems dominated the AM industry. With a build volume of 600 x 600 x 600 mm, the machine will ultimately be put to work producing aircraft engine components and is now in the materials characterisation phase. This new multi-laser capacity led to a lot of learning, which Begley shared has been critical to optimising the machine’s capabilities and production costs, and soon after proving out its business case with that first system, the organisation began to evaluate the total list of parts that it could potentially produce with AM. It all pointed to more; more parts, and more machines, and earlier this year, Collins Aerospace decided to double down on its investment by purchasing a second NXG XII 600 machine. The plan is to run different materials on each platform to add another layer of flexibility.
“When we produce additively with the build volume we have, it can be one big part, it can be two mid-sized parts, it can be hundreds of small parts,” Begley said. “That's really exciting, it gives us a lot of different options.”
Collins Aerospace
Demand for bigger build volumes led Collins Aerospace’s latest AM investment
As Begley explained, investing in additive is not always a straightforward financial business case. The complexities of printed parts, from latticed internal features which can be costly to produce, to time-consuming post-processing steps to clear up supports, mean it’s not always effective to simply compare with a cast or machined product. Begley notes that there are “so many other things that we take into consideration,” and that usually starts with taking a step back and looking at current internal and supply base capacities to see if there is a pertinent challenge that additive could help solve.
“We take a look at the total landed cost model, which is really start to finish,” Begley explained. “What are all of the factory costs? What are some of the advantages that we see with additive, whether it be freeing up capacity to do other things or eliminating some quality issues? Those are the types of things we take into account when we're looking at that business case and what kind of value we can bring to the customer, whether it be weight reduction or an inventory reduction, or a lead time reduction.”
With each of those considerations, Collins Aerospace has its intentions set on pursuing future additive applications in aerospace engine components where it sees a multitude of benefits, particularly in weight reduction, which could help contribute to grander ambitions around reducing fuel consumption and providing more sustainable alternatives to the aerospace sector. Collins has already done the work and proven its own business case for additive. Now it’s up to the industry to take the leap too.
“The aerospace industry is a pretty risk averse industry,” Begley said. “Many of our customers have invested a lot of money certifying aircraft and certifying engines. So, getting the buy in to change and go to a new technology takes a little bit more time and a little bit more thorough testing.
“But other than that, there's just so many advantages that that we bring in. That's why we're continuing to pursue it.”
