AEROSPACE


AVIATION IN AN ADDITIVE AGE


Rachel Berkowitz assesses the role additive manufacturing is playing in aircraft production


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eight, strength, and reliability represent the holy trinity of manufacturing challenges in the aerospace industry. While achieving


these at reasonable cost is an ongoing endeavour, laser additive manufacturing technologies are changing what is possible for making aircraſt components. Te 3D printing techniques forge new alternatives to traditional milling methods. Both the novel and the conventional have


their place in an industry that still values Douglas Aircraſt designer Ed Heinemann’s philosophy: ‘simplicate and add lightness’. Simplication means making a system more complex in order to improve ease of use. Laser welding is one of those now


conventional processes for building aircraſt, LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE ISSUE 29 • WINTER 2015


particularly for manufacturing the engines, according to Richard Freeman, associate director at Cambridge, UK-based TWI, formerly known as Te Welding Institute. ‘It’s interesting: you look at a contemporary


airframe – there’s very little welding. In the main commercial aircraſt, they are mostly riveted. But you could not make an engine without lots of kinds of welding,’ Freeman commented. Airbus uses CO2


fuel system, comprised of 10 nozzles, connectors, and tubes, it becomes possible to merge the pieces into a single part manufactured from a bed of metal powder, optimised for strength and weight. ‘3D printing of plastics has been around


lasers to weld parts, noted


Freeman, but added that ytterbium fibre lasers are now increasingly employed, especially for research and development. Fibre lasers can be attached to a robot arm, and they are more efficient than their CO2


counterparts. A much newer laser technology now taking


hold in the aerospace industry is additive manufacturing, which has found a captive audience in a market that requires a modest number of complex, lightweight parts. Te geometrical freedom of 3D printing offers a big advantage relative to traditional manufacturing: in a complex part such as a


since the early 1980s. But if you look at what people refer to as 3D printing [in aerospace], they’re talking about a bed of metal powder which you melt with a laser or electron beam, and fuse into a structure,’ commented Freeman. In powder bed manufacturing, a 3D CAD


model is sliced into finite layers. Each layer is recreated by depositing metal powder layers, and melting their surfaces with a scanning laser beam. Te melted particles fuse and solidify to form layers of the component with virtually no pores or voids. In laser metal deposition – another additive


method – a laser beam forms a melt pool on a metallic substrate, into which powder is directly deposited by a robot system. ‘You send powder down a nozzle, and as it exits the


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