Farnborough Airshow
Made You Look: GE Employee’s 3D-Printing Hobby Helps Company Explain Most Advanced Jet Engine Concepts
Alex Hills developed a passion for 3D printing like most hobbyists: He bought a printer and began “tinkering around” with some simple print builds.
A decade ago, Hills, who works as a test hardware engineer at GE Aviation, printed his first generic jet engine design from plans he found online. “It was a real simple model that spun with some bearings,” he says. “I thought it was cool and printed another one that I put on my desk.”
Wind energy
Catching More Wind: GE’s 3D-Printed Concrete Wind Turbine Towers Could Lead To More Efficient Wind Farms
The power industry around the world is going through a fundamental transition to renewable energy. This shift requires a lot of innovation, and few companies are better equipped to help than GE. Just look inside a cavernous warehouse near Rochester, New York. The revolution happening there is not being televised yet. It’s being printed.
3D Printing
A Leading Light: Science Breakthroughs Win This Laser Pioneer Major Accolades
Marshall Jones knows a thing or two about beating the odds, but it’s not just because of his knack for mathematics. A model of perseverance, the laser pioneer was raised by his extended family on a duck farm but ended up laying the foundation for additive manufacturing, a new breed of technologies that allow companies to 3D-print things from metal.
COVID-19
Rapid Response: 3D-Printed Shield For N95 Face Masks Could Help Clinicians Fighting Coronavirus
As COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, started cropping up across the United States in March, Caroline Shaw knew the pandemic would alter many parts of her job as a sourcing manager at GE Renewable Energy’s wind turbine factory in Pensacola, Florida. What Shaw hadn’t expected was for the virus to present her with a problem that seemed to have no simple solution.
Aerospace
The Next Generation: A Team Of Young Engineers Helped Bring 3D Printing Inside The World’s Largest Jet Engine
Stefka Petkova enjoys building things. It’s a passion she’s had since she was a small child when her dad, an electrician who liked to work on cars, kept the door to his workshop open. “I was exposed to that as a very young child and just got a lot of encouragement,” says Petkova, who she spent many afternoons watching him weld and wire automobiles.
additive manufacturing
Prost! In Time For Octoberfest, This Old German Beer Town Is Using 3D-Printed Parts To Brew Up A Storm
3D Printing
Hot Stuff: To Build More Affordable Rocket Engines, NASA Researchers Are Using The Latest 3D Printers — And 1 Ancient Metal
When Christopher Protz and Paul Gradl first started experimenting with building rocket engine components out of copper, the NASA engineers feared they might be wasting their time. Back in 2014, copper had never been used in 3D printing, and it appeared ill-suited to the technology. For one thing, particles of the shiny metal had a nasty habit of directly reflecting the 3D printers’ laser beams, partially melting the copper while frying some very expensive lasers. Early prototypes, recalls Protz, came out looking like “dark-colored blobs.”
The Need For Speed: The Potential Of Additive Manufacturing Is Enormous, And Materializing Now
Aerospace
The Woodstock For Pilots: 700,000 People Flock To Oshkosh As The World’s Largest Airshow Turns 50 This Year
Looking back at his illustrious career in aviation, Paul Poberezny said that he “didn’t think there has been a single day since I was five years old when I didn’t say the word ‘airplane.’”
The Future Of Energy
That’s Hot: This Lung-Inspired 3D-Printed Part For Cooling CO2 Could Take Power Generation To The Next Level
When Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine in 1884, it was a monumental advance. More than a century later, engineers are still relying on steam to operate the turbines that generate much of the world’s power. Perhaps it’s about time to take the technology to the next level.
One way to do that is to draw inspiration from the human body. That’s exactly what Peter deBock and his colleagues at GE Research in Niskayuna, New York, did: They devised a heat exchanger — an essential component of the cooling system of a power turbine — that mimics human lungs.