Aircraft
Additive Manufacturing Gains Altitude as Technology Matures
More aerospace companies are looking to exploit the design flexibility, cost efficiency, and greater sustainability delivered by additive manufacturing.
GE Aviation is using 3D printing techniques to make components such as combustion shrouds for aircraft engines. (Photo: GE Aviation)
GE Aviation is using 3D printing techniques to make components such as combustion shrouds for aircraft engines. (Photo: GE Aviation)

Additive manufacturing continues to proliferate across the aerospace sector as leading OEMs and their suppliers find new ways of tapping the flexibility—as well as cost and weight savings—that the approach can deliver. Increasingly, the techniques, which in some cases entails 3D printing where objects are made by building layers from either metal powder or composite materials, have become more competitive with castings for smaller parts. As the technology matures, including for both materials and machines, manufacturers will increasingly apply it to making larger components and structures too. 

“Both the technology and our confidence in it is improving,” Eric Gatlin, GE Aviation’s additive manufacturing leader, told AIN. “Our forward trajectory now is to use additives wherever it differentiates a product in terms of weight and design.”

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