Pratt & Whitney

Pratt & Whitney is hoping to delivers its first production PurePower PW1500G engines to Bombardier this year. That would make the United Technologies Corp. company the first ever to feature entry-into-service jet engine parts produced using additive manufacturing.

Over the past 25 years, Pratt & Whitney have produced over 100,000 prototype parts using additive manufacturing over the past quarter century. Recently, they've added hundreds of parts to that tally wiht the PurePower Geared Turbofan engine family's development. The company plans to be the first to use AM technology to create compressor stators and synch ring brackets for the production engines. The PurePower PW1500G engines from Pratt & Whitney exclusively power the Bombardier CSeries family of aircraft.

According to Tom Prete, Pratt & Whitney's Engineering vice president, "Pratt & Whitney has been working with additive manufacturing since the 1980s, and we are looking forward to our upcoming milestone, when the first production PurePower PW1500G engines with parts produced through additive manufacturing will be delivered. We are a vertically integrated additive manufacturing producer with our own metal powder source and the printers necessary to create parts using this innovative technology. As a technology leader, we are intrigued by the potential of additive manufacturing to support our suite of technologies and benefits to customers and the global aerospace industry."

Pratt & Whitney has realized up to 15 months lead-time savings compared to conventional manufacturing processes and up to 50 percent weight reduction in a single part in recent production tests.

"Additive manufacturing offers significant benefits to the production of jet engines," said Lynn Gambill, chief engineer, Manufacturing Engineering and Global Services at Pratt & Whitney. "We have engine tested components produced through additive manufacturing in the PW1500G."

Metal Injection Molding, Electron Beam Melt and Laser Powder Bed Fusion (including Direct Metal Laser Sintering) will all be used in some capacity in producing the PurePower engine.

The University of Connecticut and Pratt & Whitney are collaborating to advance AM research and development. The Pratt & Whitney Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center works with metal powder bed technologies. With $4.5 million invested, the center will try to keep pushing the limits of what Pratt & Whitney can accomplish with additive manufacturing, while providing a focused facility for interested manufacturing engineers and engineering students alike.