By Mike Keller
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Consider it a jet engine for the Oompa-Loompas. GE engineers working on the future of aircraft manufacturing recently showed off what they could do. They made what could be the world’s first fully functional 3D-printed mini jet engine that roared at 33,000 rotations per minute.
The backpack-sized jet engine was built by a team of technicians, machinists and engineers who work at a GE Aviation lab focused on developing additive manufacturing, a next-generation technique that can make complex 3D structures by melting metal powder layer upon layer. They built the engine over the course of several years to test the technology’s abilities and to work on a side project together, says Steve Grimm, the plant leader at the Additive Development Center outside Cincinnati.
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“We wanted to see if we could build a little engine that runs almost entirely out of additive manufacturing parts,” Grimm said. “This was a fun side project.”
Making a whole working jet engine by industrial 3D printing is quite a remarkable feat, since the technology has only been getting a serious look from manufacturers over recent years. The GE team’s finished product joins the 3D printed jet engine built at Australia’s Monash University (though they didn’t start it up) and a working 3D printed rocket engine made at the University of California, San Diego.
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The GE team couldn’t build the complexity of a whole commercial aircraft engine into their working model. Instead, they got plans for a simpler engine developed for remote control model planes and customized them for their 3D printing machines. Their final product measures around a foot long by about eight inches tall.
When they were finished, they mounted it inside a test cell typically used to try out full-scale engines and fired it up. “We got it running, high-fived each other and now it’s on display in our conference room along with many other pieces we show to people,” Grimm says.
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In contrast to traditional machining methods that typically cut parts out of larger pieces to get to a finished shape, additive manufacturing uses lasers to fuse thin layers of metal on top of each other to build parts from the ground up. This advanced technique means less material waste and more complex parts that can be built precisely to optimize how they work inside a machine.
The development team has already registered a major victory for using additive manufacturing in producing aircraft components. They designed and developed a fuel nozzle that will be additively manufactured for inclusion in the CFM LEAP jet engine for commercial single-aisle aircraft.
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“There are really a lot of benefits to building things through additive,” Grimm says. “You get speed because there’s less need for tooling and you go right from a model or idea to making a part. You can also get geometries that just can’t be made any other way.”