Authorised Partner
Additive Manufacturing for Turbomachinery
Advance Power Generation and Fuel Efficiency with Optimized, High Performance, Reliable Turbomachinery Components
The turbomachinery industry is not only highly competitive but faces calls from the marketplace for increased fuel efficiency, lower maintenance costs, and reduced greenhouse gases. With that comes the need for shorter design cycles along with an unrelenting demand for high-quality, reliable, and high-performance components that meet or exceed design criteria.
Given 3D Systems' extensive experience in turbomachinery and turbine components development and manufacturing, helping customers meet these goals is one of our top priorities. Our team stands ready to guide OEMs and suppliers through design optimization and rapid manufacturing deployment and will see your company achieve lasting success in this high-tech, fast-paced industry.
Minimize Downtime, Improve Supply Chain Efficiency, and Lower Costs with Our Additive Manufacturing Solutions and Services
80%
material waste reduction
200:1
reduction in part count
8x
faster component delivery
Additive Manufacturing Applications for Turbomachinery
Decrease Component Count While Increasing Turbine Efficiency
Combustors are fundamental to turbomachinery performance, by achieving the greatest possible fuel efficiency and power output. This depends on internal structures that promote combustion and burn clean, which requires the highest quality components made of strong, heat-resistant superalloys.
All of this is now possible thanks to direct metal 3D printing solutions and turbomachinery expertise from 3D Systems. Manufacturers can design monolithic combustor components that burn cleaner than ever before. Fewer components reduce manufacturing costs and eliminating complex assemblies increases reliability. In addition, these optimized products can be developed in far less time to deliver more effective components to market faster.
Benefits For Combustor Components Manufacturers
Improve Fuel Efficiency
Additive manufacturing gives gas turbine engineers unprecedented design flexibility. They are able to develop novel orifice shapes and mixing chambers, thus optimizing fuel and air mixtures for maximum performance and efficiency.
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Increase Reliability
Additive manufacturing delivers structurally optimized combustor components with reduced part counts and assemblies. This provides assured component integrity under the highest temperatures and operating pressures, greatly increasing gas turbine reliability.
Reduce Manufacturing Costs and Lead Time
In traditional manufacturing, heat-resistant superalloys used in turbomachinery combustors present challenges in machining, including short tool life and high material waste. Additive manufacturing has no difficulty with these materials, regardless of geometry or superalloy used. Further, replacing multipart assemblies (such as fuel injectors, swirlers, and mixers) with monolithic parts improves manufacturing yield and reduces labor costs.
Improve System Efficiency and Reliability
The parts used in turbomachinery must withstand intense thermal and structural loads. The highest requirements for part-level performance are inside hot zones of turbomachinery and among this group are compressor and turbine stator vanes, and integrated stators. With 3D Systems’ Additive Manufacturing (AM) solutions, it is possible to reduce points of failure generated by traditional complex manufacturing assemblies by consolidating several parts into one, which improves yield and reliability, and reduces manufacturing labor.
To achieve maximum efficiency and reliability, critical gas turbine components require complex internal cooling channels that are difficult to machine. Our solutions allow for the creation of optimal conformal cooling that improves thermal performance.
The Benefits of Stator Production Using 3D Systems Additive Manufacturing Solutions
Reliability and Reduced Cost
Traditional manufacturing of stator vanes and rings from billet is costly, especially with the tough materials used to make stator vanes. These complex shapes must then be brazed together when complete, further increasing costs and lead times while sacrificing assembly strength and longevity. Replacing multipart assemblies with monolithic parts increases reliability, improves manufacturing yield, and reduces labor costs.
Time to Market
One of the traditional approaches to manufacturing stator vanes and other turbine components is through the decades-old process of investment casting technology and its use of wax patterns. However, making traditional patterns first requires a mold that is costly to machine and often takes weeks or even months to produce. Because stereolithography additive manufacturing technology can produce hollow sacrificial patterns literally overnight, engineers can reach an optimal design far more quickly and without tooling and storage costs compared to conventional manufacturing methods.
Improve Thermal Performance
Thanks to additive manufacturing’s ability to produce previously un-manufacturable parts and part features, engineers have the freedom to design optimized turbomachinery components. For example, enabling the creation of more complex cooling channels will significantly increase heat transfer and turbine efficiency.
Additive Manufacturing Produces Impellers Faster and More Efficiently Than Traditional Methods
Industrial gas turbine impellers are expensive to produce via conventional manufacturing methods. The shapes are complex, the metals extremely challenging to cut, and engineers often have to make compromises in order to deliver cost-effective designs. This is especially true with ducted, high-performance impellers, which are more costly to produce due to their closed shape.
Two additive manufacturing alternatives offer significant advantages. Direct metal printing is an excellent alternative to machining from billet, reducing waste and lead times while eliminating constraints over part complexity. For larger impellers and higher volume parts in any alloy, 3D printed patterns for investment casting deliver the flexibility and economics of a tool-less workflow.
Improve Impeller Performance with Additive Manufacturing
Greater Impeller Efficiency
Additive manufacturing opens new levels of design complexity that would be very challenging to produce with conventional manufacturing. As such, more sophisticated ducted impellers can be produced to achieve increased efficiency to compress air. Topology optimization and lattice structure capabilities enable weight reductions of the massive impeller section, important for rotating parts.
Rapid Design Iterations
To anyone designing impellers, turbines, and similarly complex objects, the ability to quickly and inexpensively produce parts for form, fit, and function testing not only helps to optimize variables that affect gas and fluid flow performance, but also eliminates the risk that products might not perform as expected. With additive manufacturing, you have the capability to get functional prototypes in days instead of weeks, without tooling constraints.
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Reduced Costs and Faster Lead-Times
Traditional manufacturing of impellers from billet can represent up to 80% of material waste. This is a costly process, especially with expensive alloys such as titanium. With the Direct Metal Printing additive manufacturing process, the material is transformed into a part. When it comes to investment casting of impellers in any alloy, additive manufacturing offers a lower cost per unit for these low-volume production/high-value components. Eliminating the need for tooling to create sacrificial patterns, stereolithography QuickCast casting patterns deliver ultimate speed and flexibility.
Produce High-Quality Casings and Ducting Faster While Eliminating Tooling Costs
Industrial gas turbines require large, complex casings and ducting at low production volumes, making additive manufacturing of patterns for investment casting very economical relative to traditional tooling-based wax injection methods.
Overcome the geometry and time constraints common with conventional machined molds, replacing it with a fast, tool-less process that opens the door to greater design freedom while improving product performance.
Solving Three Gas Turbine Casings and Ducting Challenges With Additive Manufacturing
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Increase Exhaust Efficiency
The QuickCast® process is used with tremendous design freedom to create stronger, more reliable investment casting patterns for industrial gas turbine casings and ducting. This creates the possibility for smoother and more efficient gas flow structures than what is possible with traditional investment castings, which in turn improves overall turbine efficiency.
Faster Product Development
Investment casting with the QuickCast process reduces lead-time and costs. It requires no hard tooling, so patterns can be produced on-demand, allowing customers to economically go from CAD file to casting in days.
Increase Reliability
Reducing the number of components needed for gas turbine casings and ducting assemblies means fewer points of failure, resulting in greater uptime and reliability.
Addressing Turbomachinery Challenges
Application Development
The 3D Systems Application Innovation Group (AIG) leverages its decades of additive manufacturing expertise to help OEMs and suppliers develop optimized solutions for their applications. By utilizing a "design for additive manufacturing” (DFaM) approach, you can quickly develop and produce parts that consistently meet or exceed industry requirements.
Large Metal Parts with Additive Manufacturing Solutions
Our hardware, software, and materials offer customers unprecedented design flexibility, economics, and product reliability that is unmatched by any subtractive manufacturing method. From the production of intricate direct metal printed parts to extra-large, lightweight, antimony-free patterns for precision investment casting, we can meet your turbomachinery needs.
Production Capability
With our production facilities, we can be your agile manufacturing arm, helping you transition smoothly from prototype to production, while offering increased supply chain capacity and flexibility.
Technology Transfer
From installation, hands-on training and consulting support, and 3D Systems’ ability to develop pre-qualified manufacturing processes for our customers’ critical parts, turbomachinery OEM manufacturers and turbine parts suppliers are quickly able to reach production volumes on their own to reduce costs and accelerate delivery times. Our dedicated team works with you across every step, from pre-production to full-scale volume production.