Abstract
During the pursuit of this research, a novel method for the additive manufacture of metal parts has been developed. To this end, a way to create the complex geometrical structure of Inconel 625 jet turbine blades has been engineered. This advanced hybrid PETG and 90% Inconel 625 powder has first been Additive Manufactured into the shape of a turbine blade. The resulting green part produced was initially debinded at a temperature of 350 °C followed by heating to a sintering temperature of 1350 °C. This resulted in the transformation of a part into a solid Inconel 625 structure, which was later tested to understand the microstructural and mechanical properties of the material. It was found that although there was a slight degree of porosity, the structures were still mechanically sound, up to a temperature of 600 °C. The turbine blades were later machined to high tolerance 0.2 µm finish surface as is required for such components. This novel means for the fabrication of such complex and ultimately expensive to create structures allows a revolution in manufacture capabilities through the use of 3D Metal transfer printing technology.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ribeiro F (1998) Additive Manufacturing with metals. Computing & Control Engineering Journal 9(1):31–38
Gupta M (2017) Additive Manufacturing of metals. Metals 7(10):403
Thomas D (2018) Developing enhanced carbon nanotube reinforced composites for full-scale 3D printed components. Reinf Plast 62(4):212–215
Joshi SC, Sheikh AA (2015) Additive Manufacturing in aerospace and its long-term sustainability. Virtual Phys Prototyp 10(4):175–185
Tadjdeh Y (2014) Additive Manufacturing promises to revolutionize defense, aerospace industries. National Defense 98(724):20–23
Kroll E, Artzi D (2011) Enhancing aerospace engineering students' learning with Additive Manufacturing wind‐tunnel models. Rapid Prototyp J
Murr LE (2016) Frontiers of Additive Manufacturing/additive manufacturing: from human organs to aircraft fabrication. J Mater Sci Technol 32(10):987–995
Thomas D (2021) Enhancing the electrical and mechanical properties of graphene nanoplatelet composites for 3D printed microsatellite structures. Addit Manuf 47:102215
Kalender M, Kılıç SE, Ersoy S, Bozkurt Y, Salman S (2019) Additive manufacturing and 3D printer technology in aerospace industry. In 2019 9th International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies (RAST). IEEE, pp 689–694
Schiller GJ (2015) Additive manufacturing for Aerospace. In 2015 IEEE Aerospace Conference. IEEE, pp 1–8
Ashraf M, Gibson I, Rashed MG (2018) Challenges and prospects of Additive Manufacturing in structural engineering. In 13th International Conference on Steel, Space and Composite Structures (Perth, WA) (Vol 11). Engineers Australia
Mohd Yusuf S, Cutler S, Gao N (2019) The impact of metal additive manufacturing on the aerospace industry. Metals 9(12):1286
Thomas DJ (2022) Advanced active-gas Additive Manufacturing of 436 stainless steel for future rocket engine structure manufacture. J Manuf Process 74:256–265
Karakurt I, Lin L (2020) Additive Manufacturing technologies: techniques, materials, and post-processing. Curr Opin Chem Eng 28:134–143
Gasman L (2019) Additive aerospace considered as a business. In Additive Manufacturing for the Aerospace Industry. Elsevier, pp 327–340
Byun JG, Cho SM (2016) Trend of metal Additive Manufacturing by welding. Journal of Welding and Joining 34(4):1–8
Thomas DJ (2018) Ultrafine graphitised MWCNT nanostructured yarn for the manufacture of electrically conductive fabric. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 96(9):3805–3808
Singh T, Kumar S, Sehgal S (2020) Additive Manufacturing of engineering materials: a state of the art review. Mater Today Proc 28:1927–1931
Kang JW, Ma QX (2017) The role and impact of Additive Manufacturing technologies in casting. China Foundry 14(3):157–168
Duda T, Raghavan LV (2016) 3D metal printing technology. IFAC-PapersOnLine 49(29):103–110
Das S, Bourell DL, Babu SS (2016) Metallic materials for Additive Manufacturing. MRS Bull 41(10):729–741
Murr LE (2018) A metallographic review of Additive Manufacturing/additive manufacturing of metal and alloy products and components. Metallogr Microstruct Anal 7(2):103–132
Jiang J, Ma Y (2020) Path planning strategies to optimize accuracy, quality, build time and material use in additive manufacturing: a review. Micromachines 11(7):633
Jiang J (2020) A novel fabrication strategy for additive manufacturing processes. J Clean Prod 272:122916
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
There are no current confirm of interested to declare. Each author wrote the manuscript equally, Prof Thomas prepared the images and took all of the photographs during the course of three years and Dr Gleadall produced the references.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
There is no need to gather ethical approval for this research.
Consent to participate
Not Applicable.
Consent for publication
We give consent for this publication to be published.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thomas, D., Gleadall, A. Advanced metal transfer additive manufacturing of high temperature turbine blades. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 120, 6325–6335 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09176-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09176-2