New Research Center Will Take 3D Printing to the Next Level

On October 6, a Boeing 747 modified for testing jet engines taxied along a concrete runway on the edge of the Mojave Desert and took off with a brand new engine strapped to its left wing. Although the engine’s maiden flight was short, it made aviation history.

For the first time, the engine, called LEAP, flew with 19 fuel nozzles 3D-printed by a computer-guided laser from layers of metal powder. “We designed these nozzles to efficiently feed fuel into the jet engine, but they are also a work of art,” says Greg Morris, a 3D-printing pioneer who leads additive manufacturing research at GE Aviation. (GE Aviation acquired his company, Morris Technologies, in 2012.) “Methods like 3D printing give designers new freedoms and unleash their imagination. You couldn’t make this nozzle any other way.”

GE is making sure that 3D printing and other additive manufacturing tools like it liberate every designer on its payroll. The company just announced it would spend $32 million to build a new research and education center focused on additive technologies in Pennsylvania. “We want to light the fire behind additive,” Morris says. “This is still a young tool, but it’s also a very powerful and disruptive tool. We want to maximize its use across all of GE’s businesses.”

Additive manufacturing is the opposite of traditional “subtractive” manufacturing methods like turning, milling and drilling, which remove material from the product to achieve its final shape. Additive techniques, as the name implies, makes parts by adding one thin layer of material on top of another. It’s like building a loaf of bread from individual slices.

This approach allows designers to achieve lighter and more durable shapes that were previously impossible to produce. Since the finished components are very close to the final look, the technology can also dramatically reduce manufacturing waste.

Additive manufacturing allows designers to create parts like this jet engine combustor that would be very difficult to make on conventional machines. Additive manufacturing allows designers to create parts like this jet engine combustor that would be very difficult to make on conventional machines.

The 3D-printed LEAP fuel nozzle, for example, is five times more durable than the previous model, and 25 percent lighter. Additive manufacturing allowed engineers to reduce the number of individual pieces that were brazed and welded together from 20 to just one part, and achieve the best fuel flow geometry. “These tools unleash incredible creativity,” Morris says.

(The nozzles are made by Advanced Atomization Technologies, a joint venture between GE and Parker Aerospace. The LEAP engine was developed by CFM International, a joint company owned equally by GE and France’s Snecma.)

GE will use the new 125,000-square-foot facility, which will be located in western Pennsylvania, to train designers and engineers on additive manufacturing design and production, and work closely with students at nearby Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh.

Last year, GE and GrabCAD held an open 3D-printing challenge to redesign a jet engine bracket. The original bracket weighed 2,033 grams (4.48 pounds), but the winner was able to reduce its weight by nearly 84 percent to just 327 grams (0.72 pounds).Last year, GE and GrabCAD held an open 3D-printing challenge to redesign a jet engine bracket. The original bracket weighed 2,033 grams (4.48 pounds), but the winner was able to reduce its weight by nearly 84 percent to just 327 grams (0.72 pounds).

The center will have 3D printers and other additive machines that can work both with plastics and metal. GE businesses will have access to the machines to handle overflow orders, make prototypes and produce new parts without spending capital on their own. “The idea is to bring everyone together, share costs and explore our common needs,” Morris says. “It will also help us keep certain intellectual property in house.”

Besides using additive manufacturing to make things, the center’s 50 engineers will also work on developing new materials for additive technologies.

The new center will join five advanced manufacturing centers GE businesses opened in the U.S. in the last two years: Greenville, S.C. (Power & Water), Asheville, N.C. (Aviation), Auburn, Ala. (Aviation), Jacksonville, Fla. (Oil & Gas), and Rutland, Vt. (Aviation).

Dan Heintzelman, GE vice chairman, said that a recent $75 million upgrade of the Rutland center has allowed GE Aviation to apply new advanced manufacturing technology to jet engine production and save $300 million.

“We made a big bet that additive manufacturing is not a flash in a pan,” Morris says. “We know this is a way we are going to make various parts in the future. We are now in the process of training people and building awareness throughout the company. Engineers need to realize that they have this very powerful and enabling tool at their disposal.”

The new center is scheduled to open in 2015.

Emerson Inaugurates Facilities in Singapore

Emerson, a manufacturing and technology company, recently opened two facilities in Singapore: its manufacturing and integration centre and the Pervasive Sensing Centre of Excellence. Both investments are worth $21 million.

With support from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), Emerson's Process Management unit launched the manufacturing and integration centre for its Rosemount Analytical technologies. According to the press release, the new facility costs more than $11 million.

By end of 2015, around 65 people will work in the centre, which will produce and distribute analytical and combustion sensors, engineer and design complete analysis-based solutions, and develop customer-specific systems and products.

Meanwhile, the $10 million Pervasive Sensing Centre of Excellence is Emerson's first facility in the world. It will employ 50 people, who will be responsible for tasks that include remote data collection, analysis and consulting services for the company's customers in the Southeast Asian region.

Emerson and EDB are collaborating to deliver pervasive sensing pilot projects, training and testing capabilities for college students. This is aimed at helping industrial companies become more energy efficient.

MegaChips joins Imec and Holst Centre’s R&D Program

Nanoelectronics research center imec/Holst Centre and MegaChips, a fabless company focusing on the development of system LSIs and products that incorporate original algorithms and architecture, has announced that they have signed a strategic partnership for joint R&D on ultra-low power (ULP) short radio technology for smart homes and buildings.

Following the growth of mobile devices the rapidly upcoming Internet-of-Things (IoT), the market for connected devices will know an impressive growth in the coming years, with small, battery-operated sensors devices integrated everywhere—from homes and automobiles to human bodies—ultimately yielding up to hundreds of sensors per person, supporting, and even augmenting daily lives. As these wireless sensors become internet-connected and operate in heterogeneous networks, they enable percipient systems, that act on all available data from own sensors as well as from the cloud.

By 2020, models predict roughly 50 billion connected devices will be in use. These battery operated or energy-harvesting operated sensors will communicate with each other and with the internet via small short range radios that consume little amount of power—not only when active but also in the stand-by mode—and at affordable cost for mass production.

In professional applications such as smart factories, smart grid and smart buildings, ultra-low power wireless connectivity will enable maintenance free monitoring of infrastructure and resources. Today, this critical infrastructure is, in the best case, monitored on just a few locations and for only a few parameters, with expensive, cabled setups.

The availability of reliable autonomous wireless sensor nodes opens up a huge potential for cost saving by avoiding down-time of machines in factories, or shortage of energy or other resources.

Together, researchers from imec/Holst Centre and MegaChips will develop an ultra-low power multi-standard sub-GHz radio solution (compatible with ZigBee 900MHz and IEEE802.15.4g) on CMOS technology, achieving a transmit power two times lower than current state-of-the-art (60mW) and a receive power five to 10 times lower (6mW). Ultimately, energy harvested solutions will enable fully-autonomous sensors. Even within this very modest power consumption, a programmable output transmitter up to 13dBm is provided. Together with the excellent -120dBm sensitivity, this performance enables a communication distance up to 2km in free space and guarantees reliable coverage in big industrial premises, in smart metering applications and in non-line-of-sight situations in smart buildings.

“We are pleased that MegaChips has joined our ULP radio R&D program to strengthen our research ecosystem,” said Harmke de Groot, program director ULP Circuits and Devices at imec/Holst Centre. “Combining our partners’ know-how with our expertise in radio design and technology enables new innovative products for IoT while significantly shortening the time-to-market for our industrial partners".

"This ultra-low power wireless chip project will become nucleus of our IoT strategy," said Akira Takata, President and CEO of MegaChips Corporation. "We are going to lead the IoT market by combining our development capabilities of intelligent Sensor Hub and MEMS technology with imec's most advanced RF technology."

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