REPORT: PHOTONICS WEST
PROCESS MONITORING NEEDED FOR 3D PRINTING, SAYS PHOTONICS WEST PANEL
Greg Blackman reports from a metal 3D printing panel discussion at Photonics West in San Francisco, where the plea to the community was for better in situ monitoring tools for laser machines
G
E’s additive Advanced Turboprop engine could be considered the poster boy for metal additive
manufacturing. Te design takes 855 parts and combines them into 12 3D printed components; the engine is five per cent lighter with 20 per cent better fuel consumption, and the development process was accelerated by 12 months. ‘No technology like this has ever
existed that can do these things all at once,’ stated GE Additive’s technology development leader Andy Martin, speaking during a panel discussion on metal 3D printing at SPIE Photonics West at the end of January. In his statement at the
beginning of the discussion, Martin noted that the kinds of improvements traditionally made in jet engines have been
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By 2020, GE Aviation will be manufacturing in excess of 100,000 parts via additive manufacturing for the CFM Leap engine
incremental: in materials, say, in one place in the engine. Additive manufacturing, he said, is poised to transform the rate at which GE can improve its product. ‘It’s [AM] very important technology to us and we’ve embraced it utterly.’ In autumn 2017, GE Additive
unveiled a beta machine for its Atlas project with a powder bed measuring 1m2 by 300mm high. It can build parts 600mm in diameter. Te internal architecture has a gantry so that
LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE ISSUE 38 • SPRING 2018
the laser spot can be focused accurately on the powder. Te system can also be updated with additional lasers as required.
In situ sensing Despite the leaps in technology being made by GE Additive, Trumpf, Siemens and others, the panellists were restrained about praising the capabilities of metal additive manufacturing. ‘I think additive
manufacturing is real; it will change manufacturing, but it will
take longer than many claim,’ commented Peter Leibinger, CTO of Trumpf. He said that expectations need to be managed when it comes to the technology, as it will take time for the machines to become productive and robust. ‘I think there will be disillusion
coming our way in the coming years where a lot of the expectations – many of which are unrealistic – will not be fulfilled, and companies that are hopeful about this technology today as
@lasersystemsmag |
www.lasersystemseurope.com
GE Aviation
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