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First Jet Engine 3D printed

No more impressive than the toys they make running gears in an enclosed box. Perhaps even less, because at least those work.
 
"That internet thing is just a fad, It'll never amount to anything" . . Just sayin'


Nah, He's correct. You have GE and guys not only forging turbine blades to get the grain flow right but playing with single crystal structure and stuff- you just can't get that out of a powder / weld / hot sinter combo.

Plus, even 3d printing for the very very very foreseeable future still needs machining afterwards. It's not like they are achieving acceptable tolerances or finishes for really anything precision- or that's even on the horizon.... In fact, I know several guys using it for components with complex internal hydraulic passenges and things- and figuring out how to get the leftover / stray / loose clingers etc out of it is a major problem for them.
 
"That internet thing is just a fad, It'll never amount to anything" . . Just sayin'

I understand that technology takes time to develop. I did not say it wouldn't amount to anything. All I said was that this particular piece is not there yet for any real use. It could very well get there some day, but it's not there yet. I'm not putting my 401K in 3D printed turbine blades just yet...
 
Nah, He's correct. You have GE and guys not only forging turbine blades to get the grain flow right but playing with single crystal structure and stuff- you just can't get that out of a powder / weld / hot sinter combo.

The compressor side tends to be forgings with a grain flow through the airfoils. The turbine side is mostly castings which is where the single crystal alloys are used. Here's a good article if it's of interest:

Each Blade a Single Crystal » American Scientist
 
The engine chamber on SpaceX's new rocket is 3d printed in Inconel. So perhaps usable jet engines in the near future isn't too crazy an idea.
 
The engine chamber on SpaceX's new rocket is 3d printed in Inconel. So perhaps usable jet engines in the near future isn't too crazy an idea.

I believe they're already using 3D printing on some stuff like fuel nozzles and other things. The engine above has 3D printed rotating components which means it's for display only.
 
The turbine blades that I have seen are typically near net forgings from Inconel or similar alloys that have multi-tiered root interface structures to withstand the massive forces generated by being spun at many tens of thousands of revs at elevated temperatures, a rocket cone is not quite up to the same level of stress or precision. I have seen fairly powerful rocket nozzles carved out of a block of graphite with a spoon. I think 3D printing still has a pretty good way to go before it is a replacement for most of the higher end metal working technologies. That said, I also believe it is still under-utilized in many fields and could mature quite rapidly for lower strength and accuracy parts.
 
The turbine blades that I have seen are typically near net forgings from Inconel or similar alloys that have multi-tiered root interface structures to withstand the massive forces generated by being spun at many tens of thousands of revs at elevated temperatures, a rocket cone is not quite up to the same level of stress or precision. I have seen fairly powerful rocket nozzles carved out of a block of graphite with a spoon. I think 3D printing still has a pretty good way to go before it is a replacement for most of the higher end metal working technologies. That said, I also believe it is still under-utilized in many fields and could mature quite rapidly for lower strength and accuracy parts.

I happen to have a friend with a 3D laser cintering (maybe sintering) machine (Metal 3D printer) and though they use titanium, inconel, stainless and brass... it's only at best 80% the strength of a milled billet at this stage.
Theres a while to go yet before any jet engine even dares in the commercial market.
 
The first manned mission to Mars is planned as a one way trip because no one knows how to get back. So maybe send the astronauts in 5 years, let 3D printing mature 20 years then send them up a printer and the code to print out the ship to come back with..
 
If printers can be made to print atom by atom, the printed part will be superior to anything we can do now. Some of the chip foundries are almost there now.

Tom
 
If printers can be made to print atom by atom, the printed part will be superior to anything we can do now. Some of the chip foundries are almost there now.

Tom

Now THAT is what I call visionary. Quite a leap technically, but a goal that if (or, hopefully, when) achieved really could take us to other worlds. Even at a geometric rate of progress, though, it seems a long way off. Some very smart people have theorized that the Drake equation breaks down because advanced civilizations always blow themselves up before getting off their planets. I remember NASA saying in '69, give us the funding and we'll be on Mars by 1975. I hope that the Moon landings don't turn out to have been civilization's high-water mark. Today there is a serious opposition to modernity in all its forms, by an authoritarian dark-ages culture. What a shame if the Caliphate happens before we can print our way outta here...
 
it is not the future,it is now. The reason the university printed out a jet engine they designed themselves was to show that anything can be printed. Also the machine required to print it is very very large.
now to give some idea of the use this printing can be put too, Some years ago i had a special cam for an injection pump digitised with an infrared scanner. The reason being was bosch,who had designed the original cam,had ceased making them in 1974 and had destroyed the tooling and lost the knowledge required to make them. The cam has a three dimensional profile and there isn't one around anymore who understands how they were machined.
I kept the disc for years and even emailed the data to various persons who said they could make it...none could once they saw a picture of the part.
So...last year a friend in Germany located a company who could download the data (which by now was way outdated) and print it out .we had a pair printed (after fixing one or two glitches in the data ) and we have run a pair of injection pumps on the test bench to see if they work and indeed they do. there is no real load on the cam,it acts as means of telling the fuel delivery where the throttle is at any RPM in it's rev range.
It has been known for some years that a printed part can then be used as a pattern (or modified to serve as a pattern) for casting new parts. There are people in the veteran car scene who are doing this on a regular basis and have been doing it for at least 5 years.
I can buy a cheap simple printer anywhere these days and there is even a source of filament made from recycled plastics in Africa which is a means of income in poorer countries.
 








 
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