The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials (IFAM) in Germany, reports that it has developed a fully-functional, true-to-scale gas turbine that demonstrates the potential and limitations of powder bed-based additive manufacturing technologies.
The demonstrator Siemens SGT6-8000 H, is a 1:25 scale model of a gas turbine for power generation. It was completely manufactured with additive processes in all areas except for the shaft. The component assembly consists of 68 parts made of aluminum, steel, and titanium. Through component optimization and the possibilities of Electron Beam and Laser Powder Bed Fusion (EB-PBF and L-PBF) technologies, these 68 parts replace the almost 3000 individual parts that make up the original component.
Fraunhofer IFAM was involved in the manufacturing of the component as well as the data modification for the technology-adapted production. The housing components, with stator stages, were manufactured directly on site at the Innovation Center Additive Manufacturing ICAM in Dresden using EB-PBF of Ti-6Al-4V in a GE Additive Arcam EBM Q20+ machine. The turbine stages and the other housing components were manufactured at H+E using L-PBF.
The components were modified constructively in order to be able to manufacture the turbine ‘first time right’. For example, it was made possible to manufacture the 316L housing segment by L-PBF without support structure.
