The company says it is first to use AM technology to produce compressor stators and synch ring brackets for the production engines.
‘Pratt & Whitney has been working with additive manufacturing since the 1980s, and we are looking forward to our upcoming milestone, when the first production PurePower PW1500G engines with parts produced through AM will be delivered,’ said Tom Prete, Pratt & Whitney's engineering vice president. ‘We are a vertically integrated additive manufacturing producer with our own metal powder source and the printers necessary to create parts using this innovative technology. As a technology leader, we are intrigued by the potential of additive manufacturing to support our suite of technologies and benefits to customers and the global aerospace industry.’
Weight reduction
In production tests, Pratt & Whitney says that it realized up to 15 months lead-time savings compared to conventional manufacturing processes and up to 50% weight reduction in a single part. The PurePower engine family parts will be the first product produced using 3D printing powder bed AM.
Related manufacturing technologies that will be used in the PurePower engine production include metal injection molding (MIM), electron beam melt and laser powder bed fusion (including direct metal laser sintering).
