3D printing - Flymotorer

Both GE and Rolls Royce Are To Use 3D Printing To Make Jet Engines And Violate Engineering's Prime Commandment


There is an old and important saying in engineering: fast, better, cheaper. The point being that you can only ever have two out of the three. But in this pair of tales about how both GE and Rolls Royce are to be using 3D printing in order to produce their respective jet engines we've an interesting violation of that basic engineering commandment.

Here's the GE story:

General Electric GE 0% (GE), on the hunt for ways to build more than 85,000 fuel nozzles for its new Leap jet engines, is making a big investment in 3D printing. Usually the nozzles are assembled from 20 different parts. Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing can create the units in one metal piece, through a successive layering of materials. The process is more efficient and can be used to create designs that can't be made using traditional techniques, GE says. The finished product is stronger and lighter than those made on the assembly line and can withstand the extreme temperatures (up to 2,400F) inside an engine.

This is 3D printing using metals of course, not the plastics that most of the home and small business printers are currently using. But do note that they are claiming that the new process is both more efficient (that is, cheaper) and also better, in that they can create more complex parts this way. And then there's the Rolls Royce side of the story:

Rolls-Royce is looking to use 3D printers to make lighter components for its aircraft engines, the company's head of technology strategy has said.

Henner Wapenhans said the new technology could allow the manufacturer to produce parts more quickly, slashing lead times, the Financial Times reported.

"3D printing opens up new possibilities, new design space," Dr Wapenhans said. "Through the 3D printing process, you're not constrained [by] having to get a tool in to create a shape. You can create any shape you like.

The point here being that they can now do things faster. For, in order to make these metal parts in the traditional manner you need first to have the tool made, that is, the form by which you will make the part. And that process can take 18 months to go through all of the necessary iterations.

Putting the two stories together we can thus see that 3D printing is going to allow faster, better and cheaper: a direct violation of that basic engineering commandment. But no, this isn't a miracle, nor even a refutation of the rule. For what is left unsaid in the only being able to have two of the three is "using current technologies". We're limited when we use traditional techniques to gaining only two of the three things we desire, yes, but as every engineer knows if you can bring in some entirely new method of doing things you can indeed gain the entire trinity.

Which brings us to an interesting little end note. If traditional techniques can only bring us two of the three and we would need a breakthrough in technology in order to gain all of those three then....if we've a technology that can provide all three then we do have a breakthrough in technology. I've previously been rather dismissive of 3D printing as I've thought that there's a limit, and a low one, to the number of things that people will want to print out of plastic at home. But seeing it being used at the very esoteric end of the jet engine business is revising that view somewhat. I now think it's going to be a bigger thing than I previously did.