GKN Aerospace is to relocate its North America additive manufacturing (AM) centre of excellence to the Lone Star Commerce Center in Fort Worth, Texas.
The aerospace tier one supplier will transfer existing equipment and staff from its Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility in Tennessee to the new location in Texas. It will eventually become a GKN Aerospace Global Technology Centre (GTC).
Spanning 100,000 square feet, the Fort Worth AM centre of excellence will initially house research and development for the company’s laser metal deposition with wire (LMD-w) efforts pertaining to large-scale titanium aerostructures. GKN Aerospace's LMD-w technology has been developed at its Swedish GTC, with the company recently completing its largest titanium AM demonstration part to date: a component measuring 8 feet (2.5 metres) and processed from approximately 100 pounds of titanium wire.
Within the next few years, GKN Aerospace expects to build on the Fort Worth facility, turning it into its fourth Global Technology Center. The company already has GTCs in Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, the latter of which TCT visited earlier this year. In transforming the facility into a GTC, GKN Aerospace will renovate the facility with office space and additional equipment over the next two years, while the City of Fort Worth will provide a grant based on qualified R&D investment. At full capacity, the facility will support up to 100 personnel.
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“We are very excited to bring our additive technology research to Fort Worth,” commented Shawn Black, GKN Aerospace’s President of Defence. “With proximity to many of our major customers in Texas and across the US, this is the right place for GKN Aerospace. Along with partnership with local government, we look forward to expanding our titanium additive manufacturing capabilities and pushing the boundaries of this technology for our customers and the aerospace industry.”
“Fort Worth is proud to welcome GKN Aerospace and excited by the cutting-edge R&D that it will bring to the region. This centre of excellence builds on a strong cluster of Fort Worth-based firms who are innovating the future of aerospace and transportation manufacturing, and we look forward to the partnership that we are building with GKN Aerospace.”
