GE's researchers have announced that a new additive manufacturing technique called cold spray could facilitate part-building or make repairs.
The technique has been branded a "fountain of youth" by the international company, as it involves spraying metal powders at a high velocity to cover or make new surfaces. Cold spray additive manufacturing has been added to GE's toolkit and it particularly attractive for producing or repairing larger structures, which can be challenging for today's powder-bed additive manufacturing processes due to equipment size limitations. Cold spray has the potential to scale up to build larger parts too, with the only limitation being the size of the area over which metal powders can be applied.
Manager of the Coating and Surface Technologies Lab at the GE Research Center Anteneh Kebbede said: "In addition to being able to build new parts without welding or machining, what's particularly exciting about cold spray as an innovative, 3D process is that it affords us the opportunity to restore parts using materials that blend in and mirror the properties of the original part itself. This extends the lifespan of parts by years, or possibly by decades, ultimately providing improved customer value."
The future benefits of cold spray, according to GE, include extended product lifespan and reduced manufacturing time and material costs - all of which can translate into real efficiency gains for companies.
