Page 35 - 3D Metal Printing Spring 2018

FEATURE 3D Arconic Goes All-In
on AM
For parts large and small, this iconic manufacturer is developing materials and techniques to forward the technology and feed its aerospace customers.
In September of 2017, Arconic revealed that it had manufactured the first 3D- printed titanium part installed on a series-production Airbus commercial air- craft. Arconic (which arose as a separate company out of Alcoa in 2015) produced the part at its Austin, TX, additive-manu- facturing (AM) facility for the A350 XWB, Airbus’s newest widebody jet.
The announcement of the installed air- frame bracket on a production aircraft, as opposed to a test model, represented a leap forward for AM in aerospace, paving the way in qualifying more-complex 3D- printed parts for such applications. It also reveals the potential Arconic sees in AM for aerospace.
The company centers its laser-powder- bed AM development and production in Austin, with its Ampliforge, high-deposi- tion-rate (HDR) AM and metal-powder developent headquartered at the Arconic Technology Center outside of Pittsburgh, PA, and its forging operations in Cleveland,
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
OH. Other Arconic locations also make use of these technologies.
How did Arconic start down the AM road, where is it at and where does it hope to go?
A Natural Evolution
The printing of plastic patterns for investment casting, via stereolithography, marked the company’s introduction to AM 20 years ago, according to Don Larsen, Arconic’s vice president of R&D for advanced manufacturing and advanced powders. In 2015, two events signaled an all-in attitude with metal AM.
The mid-year acquisition by Alcoa (now Arconic) of RTI International Metals, Inc. included the RTI subsidiary, Directed Manufacturing, an Austin-based AM provider of metal and plastic components, production parts and prototypes. This sig- naled an entrance into laser-powder-bed printing. Simultaneously, it purchased a Sciaky electron-beam 3D metal-printing machine, a wire-fed HDR unit installed
at its Technology Center.
“We make parts from materials such as
aluminum, titanium and nickel, using all types of metalworking and casting process- es, so it was natural that we would look at AM,” says Ed Colvin, Arconic’s vice presi- dent of technology in the Engineered Prod- ucts and Solutions business. “We looked at the AM space for not just detailed, small- er laser-powder-bed parts, but also to see where AM might fit within our portfolio for manufacturing larger parts.”
On the laser-powder-bed side, Arconic produces parts from nickel, titanium and some stainless-steel alloys, while high- deposition-rate work mainly centers on titanium. As we’ll see, the company con- tinues refining and qualifying its processes and developing AM-friendly materials while exploring new AM applications.
Powder-Bed Progress
While Arconic has a long history in metallurgy, material processing and man- ufacturing, AM demands a unique skillset and knowledge base, which the company has been working on.
“With traditional methods such as forg- ing or casting, we deal with metal alloys cooling from liquid fairly slowly into a solid,” explains Larsen. “But with 3D print- ing, we need to understand the evolution
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Fig. 1—This bracket, produced by Arconic via the laser-powder- bed AM process, represents Arconic’s formidable yet constantly increasing capabilities in 3D printing.