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GE Expands Its Additive and Aviation Technology Commitment Across Europe
GE Additive stole the show on the second day of formnext 2016, with a series of big announcements as they look to accelerate the additive revolution.
Their first announcement, a $10 million investment in two education programmes, was only the start.
Following on from their acquisition of Concept Laser last month, GE are striving towards developing a global network of additive capability.
GE Aviation’s new manufacturing plant in Alabama is now the home to the mass production of highly sophisticated aviation components using additive manufacturing technology. The Auburn plant is running 28 additive printing machines around the clock, producing fuel nozzle injectors for the best-selling LEAP jet engine from CFM International, a 50/50 joint company of GE and Safran Aircraft Engines.
It is the first sophisticated jet engine component to be produced using the additive manufacturing process, and it has been successfully operating in airline service since this summer as part of a growing LEAP jet engine fleet powering the Airbus A320neo aircraft. Between GE Aviation’s printing machines at its Additive Technology Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the manufacturing site in Auburn, GE is expecting to produce around 6,000 LEAP fuel nozzle injectors in 2016, growing to 12,000 in 2017.
“The industrialisation of our additive process is going very well,” said Sean Keith, Manager of Machine Technology for GE Additive. “Our production rates and yields for the LEAP nozzle tips are where we had hoped, and cost curves are trending in the right direction.”
Meanwhile, GE is also expanding its Additive and Aviation technology across Europe. The recent acquisition of Concept Laser, based in Germany, underscores their ongoing investment in Europe. As GE awaits regulatory approval for their investment in Concept Laser, more than 400 GE Aviation engineers across Italy, Poland, Czech Republic and Germany are developing GE’s Advanced Turboprop Engine (ATP) to power Textron Aviation’s new single-engine turboprop aircraft. The ATP engine will have more components made with additive machines than any production engine in aviation history – 35% of the turboprop’s parts will be built via additive manufacturing.
Currently with almost 12,000 employees in Europe, GE are set to increase that number by 500 when they complete the construction of a new turboprop factory in Czech Republic. This will be their 20th site in Europe.
GE also revealed their engineers are utilising the ‘transformative power’ of additive manufacturing to revolutionise the company’s deign practices for industrial products. Prior to the introduction of AM, design creativity and complexity were dictated, and limited, by the production capability of subtractive manufacturing machines.
These limitations led to design trades between critical factors such as performance, cos, durability and weight for products fielded in industries ranging from aerospace and power generation to medical and electronics.
Additive is the world’s first manufacturing method that allows engineers to simultaneously design improvements in product performance, reliability, cost and weight, all at faster speeds.
One example of additive’s revolutionary impact on engineering design is GE Aviation’s Advanced Turboprop (ATP), which will power the new Cessna Denali single-engine turboprop aircraft. GE engineers were able to reduce 855 subtractive manufactured parts to 12 uniquely complex additive manufactured parts, which constitute 35% of the engine’s total architecture.
“If we had designed the ATP exhaust case using subtractive manufacturing techniques, we’d have to design the entire case with a thickness dictated by the weakest point, which adds unnecessary weight,” said Gordon Follin, GE’s engineering manager for the ATP programme. “By utilising additive, we designed significantly more complex aerodynamic shapes and then added features for structural stiffness.
"The ATP exhaust case has a very thin liner, which is the aerodynamic shape, and then we printed external spars on the case that provide the required stiffness. Additive gave us the flexibility to implement the strength where it’s needed, improve aerodynamics for markedly better performance and durability while lowering the weight of the system.”
GE made the series of announcements at the formnext exhibition in Frankfurt. See Mohammad Ehteshami, Vice President at GE Additive present at the formnext powered by tct conference on 18th November at 10am.
