Video Tour: Collins Aerospace AM Production Site in West Des Moines

In response to aircraft-industry customer demand, Collins Aerospace is preparing to manufacture turbine engine components that once might have been made through machining and brazing through laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) instead. The company has experience with LPBF for producing land-based turbine parts. The aircraft engine work will entail higher production rates. Collins’ response is an addition to its West Des Moines, Iowa, production site housing two LPBF machines with 600-mm-cubed build volumes and 12 lasers apiece. The same addition houses postprocessing capabilities including depowdering, cleaning, EDM cutoff and heat treat. The result is that component types that used to require a supply chain to produce now can be made almost entirely within essentially a single large room. Watch this video filmed during my visit to the facility.

Related

• More about the West Des Moines additive manufacturing capability, including the economic case for AM and path to validating the additive process for aircraft parts.
• An earlier Collins Aerospace additive manufacturing investment: this AM facility in Monroe, North Carolina supporting AM production throughout Collins.

Transcript

I am at Collins Aerospace. West Des Moines, Iowa, production facility. Collins makes engine components for land-based and aircraft turbine engines. Uses additive manufacturing. It has a history of using additive for components of land-based engines. For aircraft, demand for additive manufactured components is potentially much greater, argues for a fuller scale production facility for additive component production.

Collins opened this new production center for additive manufacturing. Two 12-laser laser powder bed fusion machines. One for aluminum, one for nickel-based alloy. The previous single-laser machines that did lower-quantity work had build volumes of this size. By comparison, these 12-laser machines have build volumes that are this size. Capacity for much higher-quantity production all in one build.

Let me walk you through the production steps that occur inside this vertically integrated additive production facility. The starting point is powder raised to the top of the machine. A build cycle will probably take days replaces what used to be a much longer lead time involving various suppliers, various assembly steps, some of them joining steps requiring very high skill, all of that together delivering a high loss rate. All of that is replaced by a build cycle consolidating what used to be an assembly into single-piece builds.

At the end of that cycle, this chamber is what comes out of the machine. Parts, build plate, powder are contained here. De-powdering is the next step. Bulk de-powdering and fine de-powdering performed in this area. Next is cleaning. Stress relief with the parts still on the plate. Wire EDM for part removal, then heat treating. If the part has to be sent away for hot isostatic pressing, which many do, that remains the longest lead time step because it's the one step that requires an external supplier. After heat treating, whatever machining is needed is done onsite here in Des Moines.

This facility was designed with additive manufacturing in mind, not just laser powder bed fusion, but high-volume production through laser powder bed fusion on large machines. That meant giving consideration to moving these large build chambers around throughout this space. There is the padding to protect the columns in this facility, for example, but also just the height of this ceiling. This is about 33 feet high, the highest ceiling on this campus at Collins Aerospace. And that is because of the need for a crane to elevate that powder up top to begin the build. So in the case of this facility, vertically integrated production required a lot of vertical clearance.