Honeywell jump starts jet engine innovation with ceramic Additive Manufacturing
As a leading provider of turbine propulsion engines for business aircraft, military trainers and helicopters, Honeywell is developing a new family of turbofan engines that will be lighter, quieter and more powerful, while running on 100% sustainable aviation fuel. The company is reported to be using Additive Manufacturing to trim many months off the development timeline.
“Turbine blades are made through an investment casting process that only a few foundries in the world can handle,” explained Honeywell Chief Manufacturing Engineer Brian Baughman. “It involves machining extremely complex metal dies and tooling to create ceramic moulds [casting cores], which are then cast with a molten superalloy to form the blades.” Instead, Honeywell is now using a Vat Photopolymerisation (VPP) Additive Manufacturing technology to process ceramic slurry and manufacture the cores directly. Using a ceramic AM machine developed by Prodways Group, Honeywell has dramatically reduced the time and cost of producing the first-stage high-pressure turbine blades needed to develop the new engine family.
TRUSTED BY INDUSTRY’S BIGGEST NAMES
Discover how we help leading brands shape the industry conversation
| Contact us |
“With the conventional investment casting process, it can take 1-2 years to produce the turbine blades needed for the development process,” added Mike Baldwin, Principal R&D Scientist. “Additive Manufacturing lets us take the design, print the mould, cast it, test it and get real numbers to validate our models – and the whole process takes just 7-8 weeks. If we need to tweak the design, we can change it electronically and get another blade in about six weeks.”
Even minor changes to the blade design cost up to $1 million or more before the days of Additive Manufacturing, he added. “Additive Manufacturing enables rapid prototyping and gives us greater flexibility to accelerate development, manage costs and create the best possible product for our customers. Reducing development cycle time is our primary objective, but we also anticipate saving several million dollars in development costs compared to using the traditional blade casting process.”
Honeywell installed Prodways’ latest MOVINGLight ceramic AM machine, the CERAM PRO 365, at its Additive Manufacturing centre in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2023. “Our 3D printers are a perfect match for this use case,” said Michaël Ohana, Prodways Group CEO. “We can process ceramics slurries to build a large number of parts in a single day and deliver consistent manufacturing results at every print.”
Additive Manufacturing is ideal for companies like Honeywell that need to produce precision components in relatively low volumes, Baughman said. “Low volumes are often a struggle since the upfront tooling cost for a turbine blade is very high and fabrication requires a long lead time. Additive Manufacturing makes a lot of sense in cases like this.”
Honeywell began metal Additive Manufacturing in 2007 at its lab in Phoenix. Today, the company is reported to produce hundreds of aircraft components with Additive Manufacturing and has expanded its efforts to additional operations in China, Europe, India and the United States.
