Selective Laser Melting Technology for Aerospace Applications

Overview

Embracing 3D printing from the early days, aircraft engine manufacturers capitalized on the benefits of producing highly-complex, low volume components to reduce the cost of jet engine production, a major factor in aircraft operating costs. The innovation of this sector has demonstrated the ability to design intricate parts for improved functionality, rather than for manufacturability, and made additive manufacturing a must have for leading aerospace and defense manufacturers. The optimized topology of these builds allows for parts to maintain their same strength and load requirements while significantly reducing weight and playing a role in a key goal of the aerospace industry – to improve fuel efficiency.

The new free­dom of de­sign cre­ated by se­lec­tive laser melt­ing makes it pos­si­ble to pro­duce jet en­gines with clean com­bus­tion, im­proved dura­bil­ity and higher ef­fi­ciency. An­other ad­van­tage of the SLM tech­nol­ogy is the pos­si­bil­ity to in­te­grate sev­eral parts into one, thus avoid­ing join­ing processes. These reduced assemblies lead to a sim­pli­fied man­u­fac­tur­ing process, lower costs per part and shorter lead times. Moreover, customers in need of small batch sizes, such as spacecraft and satellites, also ben­e­fit from the SLM tech­nol­ogy that en­ables the pro­duc­tion of func­tional pro­to­types and end-use components for aero­space cus­tomers.

The SLM 280 2.0 Twin ful­fills the re­quire­ments aero­space customers for op­ti­mum ma­te­r­ial qual­ity. The high-per­for­mance, highly productive ma­chine pro­vides patented multi-beam tech­nol­ogy with up to two 700W lasers. In ad­di­tion, bi-di­rec­tional pow­der ap­pli­ca­tion helps  shorten pro­duc­tion time of in­di­vid­u­ally man­u­fac­tured metal com­po­nents.

SLM Solutions pro­vides a wide range of suit­able ma­te­ri­als for the aero­space in­dus­try, including nickel su­per­al­loys (IN719, IN625 and HX), ti­ta­nium and alu­minum al­loys, which meet the strin­gent re­quire­ments of air­craft en­gine man­u­fac­tur­ers for met­al­lo­graphic and me­chan­i­cal prop­er­ties. Our au­to­matic pow­der man­age­ment by means of vac­uum tech­nol­ogy takes place in a closed-loop sys­tem within an inert gas at­mos­phere, achieving an in­creased level of work safety through con­tact­-free pow­der han­dling.

The ex­pe­ri­enced ex­perts of the SLM So­lu­tions team are al­ways avail­able to help you take ad­van­tage of this ex­cit­ing tech­nol­ogy and ad­vance your com­pany toward qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the pro­duc­tion of aero­space com­po­nents.

How can the SLM Solutions team sup­port your pro­ject?