GE Additive
Additively manufactured, cobalt-chrome sump cover for F110 engine produced by GE Aviation on the Concept Laser M2 machine.
GE’s Additive and Aviation businesses have partnered to produce a 3D printed sump cover for the F110 engine used by the United States Air Force (USAF) for two of its aircraft.
The United States Air Force uses the F110 engine on its F-15 and F-16 aircraft and made the engine the focus of the first phase of a metal additive collaboration programme between GE and the Air Force which commenced in mid-2019. It is the first time GE Aviation and GE Additive have deployed teams from their engineering and supply chain departments for the benefit of an external customer.
The programme was designed to identify, apply and scale technology to be implemented to support the continued operation and sustainment of the Air Force’s fleet of aircraft. Since a large number of its aircraft are entering their sixth decade service, the risk of not being able to source and produce spare parts grows every day.
Conventionally, the sump cover is cast in aluminium but with lead times as long as two to three years, additive manufacturing had been touted as a potential alternative. GE had already proved metal additive manufacturing’s capabilities in meeting the rigorous regulatory requirements of the aviation sector through its LEAP fuel nozzle engine and its GE9X engine and so working with its Aviation and Additive businesses seemed an obvious choice for the Air Force and its Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO).
The engineering team at GE Aviation’s Additive Technology Center in Cincinnati was responsible for fine-tuning parameters to ensure the robust design practices were met and additively manufactured the sump covers in cobalt-chrome on Concept Laser M2 machines. Departments at the United States Air Force believe the application of additive manufacturing for applications like the sump cover ‘have incredible potential to improve USAF supportability’ and ‘improve readiness and sustainability.’
GE Additive
GE Aviation F110 engine.
GE Aviation F110 engine.
“The collaborative effort between the US Air Force and GE shows great promise towards the adoption of metal 3D printed parts as an option to solve the US Air Force’s current and future sustainment challenges,” commented Colonel Benjamin Boehm, Director, Air Force Lifecycle Management Center/ LP Propulsion Directorate. “This capability provides an alternate method to source parts for legacy propulsion systems throughout their life cycle, especially when face with a diminishing supplier base of when infrequent demands or low volume orders are attractive to traditional manufacturers.”
GE and the US Air Force are working to identify applications through a spiral development programme, with each phase growing more complex and the scales also increasing. In this programme, an increase in complexity would mean progressing to part consolidation and eventually complex components and systems, such as common core heat exchangers. Next up, in phase 1b, the programme’s participants will turn their focus to a sump cover housing, a family of parts, used on the TF34 engine which has been in service for more than 40 years.
“The programme with GE is ahead of schedule and preliminary work already done on the sump cover has allowed us to move forward quickly,” commented Beth Dittmer, Division Chief, Propulsion Integration at Tinker Air Force Base. “As we build our metal additive airworthiness plan for the Air Force, the completion of each phase represents a significant milestone as we take a step closer to getting an additive part qualified to fly in one of our aircraft.”
