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GE Pushes Out Blue Arc, Calling it ‘Big Step Forward’ in Cutting Tools
G
E is preparing to sell to outsiders a subtractive manufacturing technology called Blue Arc that represents “a big
step forward” in cutting tools, a fi eld that’s been stuck on hard tungsten carbide tools since the 1950s, Dan Potvin, licensing manager with GE Ventures, said. Blue Arc, a high-speed electro-erosion tech-
nology, is on display at the GE Global Research Automation Center (Van Buren Township, MI) and sales folks sang its praises at IMTS and JIMTOF in Tokyo. Blue Arc uses an electro-erosion process GE developed for internal use 15 years ago, representing “the fastest way to rough cut extremely tough alloys” like aerospace-grade ti- tanium alloys and extremely tough nickel alloys, he said. “We’re using electrical energy to create sparks between the tool, which is an electrode, and the workpiece, which is another electrode.” Blue Arc is about four to fi ve times faster than conven- tional cutting in aerospace alloys, Potvin asserts. GE is cur- rently not aware of any competition, other than conventional machining, for the technology that is commercially available, he added.
The newer materials are tough to machine. The level of heat generated during the machining of them can damage traditional cutters. Making parts from the newer metals gen- erally has been taking longer and costing more. GE needed to fi nd a better way, because it uses parts of this ilk in gas turbines and jet engines. Blue Arc is sort of a gentle giant. It touches the part it is machining, but there’s no real force.
It melts part of the workpiece away and quickly fl ushes away the molten material, “so it uses very low force, and that very low force allows you to do the higher speeds,” he said. “It also allows you to do unusual geometries, long extensions on the tool, fl exible parts and so forth.”
Andrew Trimmer, a chemical engineer at GE Global Research, has been developing cutting applications, improving the cutting performance for diffi cult to machine alloy and low rigidity materials, and developing process control for Blue Arc over the last 10 years. Here, he holds a Blue Arc cutting electrode.
The original process was developed as a submerged pro- cess. But the process no longer needs to take place under water. “Now we can actually do a conventional machining type application where you have just the fl ooded coolant coming onto the tool,” Potvin said. “The theory behind the process is that you bring tool and workpiece together, and they start sparking at a very high amperage, low-voltage, which is 25 to 30 V, and that spark- ing creates the heat that melts the workpiece.” Once the right portion of the workpiece is strategically melted, “the next job is to remove that molten material as soon as possible,” he said. “That’s why we adopted this process—a very high-pressure fl ushing system.” The fl ushing happens in milliseconds. GE has up to 1000 psi of coolant coming through the center of the tool, for one circuit. It has four circuits of coolant going on, and they are programmable from the CNC program. Different pressures can be adjusted for different applications.
November 2016 |
AdvancedManufacturing.org 25
Photo courtesy GE
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