Posted on 05/14/2015 3:35:57 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
If you needed any more proof that you can make absolutely anything with a 3D printer, check out this video from GE. To showcase the versatility of 3D printing as a manufacturing process, a team of engineers at GE recently built a fully-functional, backpack-sized jet engine made entirely from 3D-printed parts. And it’s not just for show either — the team actually fired the engine up and took it up to 33,000 RPMs to demonstrate how robust the parts are.
Now, obviously, since this is a jet turbine we’re talking about here, it wasn’t printed in ABS with the latest MakerBot model.
Instead, the engine and all of its various internal parts were manufactured over the course of several years using a technique known as Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) — a process in which a laser is aimed at a bed of fine metal particles to selectively melt and fuse them together to create an object layer-by-layer. It’s not the fastest printing method in the world, but the resulting parts are just as strong and reliable as those made via traditional casting or machining techniques.
The cool thing about the turbine — well, besides that it’s 3D-printed — is that it’s not just a miniature version of a full-blown jet engine.
(Excerpt) Read more at digitaltrends.com ...
Good for home many hours, I wonder.
Damn them. I wuz gonna do that.
Oh well. Always knew GE or Pratt or Garrett (cough, Honeywell..gak) would do it once DMLS was good enough.
Might point out that this looks like a low performance engine, the compressor has straight radial vanes, turbine is basic and the surfaces are not finished.
Still....it works.
Now everyone can have a jet.
Jets for the masses. What a great thing.
3D printers will revolutionize manufacturing.. Someday people will purchase the templates and output their products from home. Probably end millions of jobs, too. Nonetheless, FORWARD WE GO!
The rockets on the Dragon crew spacecraft are also 3D printed:
SpaceX Crew Dragon Spacecraft Takes Flight During Pad Abort Test at Cape Canaveral
I didn’t need another reason to not fly.
“Direct Metal Laser Sintering”
that answers my question...
“Good for home many hours, I wonder.”
There’s a market for one that would be good for two, if it’s cheap and good enough - A cruise missile, for example. Keep in mind that the MTBF on the Nazi ME-262’ engines was MAYBE 8-10 hours.
“Direct Metal Laser Sintering”
I want a home model for under 2K.
Small turbines aren’t efficient anyway - too much surface area per volume fluid flow, correct?
Interesting!
Believe it was YEARS ago that having available jet packs on our backs for travel, would be here by now.
Whatever happened to that - ??? Possibly because ‘they’ haven’t figured how to get more travel minutes/mileage per ‘flight.’
Shoot - I was really looking forward to that because I love flying, anyway!
Time is running out for some of us.
One certain way to answer that question.
Let the engineers who claim credit for this technological breakthrough to travel exclusively in aircraft powered by the mickey mouse device for the next couple of years.
Normally jet engines last for tens of thousands of flight hours with minimal maintenance.
On the other hand, for "disposable" applications it may fit the bill. Powering drones in a hostile environment comes to mind.
I did see it - 2 nights ago, I think, and already forgot!
These guys are ever so lucky to be able to do this!
But what I mean is I thought years ago we were ‘promised’ JetPacks - so that I would be able to visit a daughter 20 miles west of here - to avoid the busy 101 Ventura Freeway - in perhaps 5 minutes - ?
But not expect to Jet Pack to a daughter in Colorado. That would probably cause nose bleeds!
The pictures of Dubai - ever see the Tom Cruise movie partially shot in Dubai? ‘Mission Impossible - The Ghost - - ‘ something or other. It was on FX Wed. night.
Thanks for sending along that link.
I tend to think of it in terms of Specific Speed (Ns) and the specific diameter (Ds) which is what you're referring to.
And for most companies the big one is Ns because it tells you what machine you want. The GE guys did the right thing because it's a radial machine, the specific speed will push you there for a small gas turbine; unfortunately it will also push you to very high physical speeds of the rotors. For a centrifugal compressor that means a heavy mass spinning fast = high stress.
But all that's been overcome in the last 40 years or so, and low thrust jet engines that are extremely efficient are now common place....mostly in cruise missiles!
Good ol' Barber-Nichols has a good paper on this:How to Select Turbomachinery For Your Application
And of course GE / Pratt / Honeywell / Williams all have performance codes that just spit it out on demand...
What the hell is "mickey mouse" about it?
Additive manufacturing produces metal parts with fewer voids. DMLS is in its infancy but already it is showing that parts can be built with lower failure rates due to internal cracking under load.
All of this stuff is being implemented now at light speed because anyone with a brain can see that it will utterly revolutionize the factory: no more 5-axis NC mills laboriously cutting a highly complex part and taking days to do it.
There's nothing lightweight about a single spool jet engine turning at 33,000 RPM I guarantee you. That compressor & turbine has been in a spin pit and been taken to burst speed and they know the modes. As engines go it's higher tech then anything built in the 50s. People used to fly in Century series fighters in front of sketchier engines then this.
Realistically only the compressor and the shaft might be built this way; the turbine will be single crystal and that may not change for a while....but peeples be workin' that, too.
It's easy to dismiss some of these technology demonstrators, but it's just the beginning.
Current generation small gas turbines could fix a lot of that but a ducted fan is the most likely solution.
Instead of an army of guys with jet packs on the military decided that 10 men in a helicopter was the right way to assault the village, thus we got Vietnam...it was the right decision.
If you want one now you can put a deposit on it:
And maybe they'll deliver it in 2016...
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