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Thursday, 10/12/2017 7:20:22 AM

Thursday, October 12, 2017 7:20:22 AM

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Honeywell: Driving AM application and supply chain development in the aerospace industry

The Autumn 2017 issue of Metal AM magazine has an 11 page feature story on Honeywell additive manufacturing. Arcam is one of the four manufacturers that Honeywell name in the article.

The PDF at metal-am.com - Autumn 2017 issue of Metal AM magazine

From the Honeywell feature found on pages 81 to 91

Honeywell’s metal Additive Manufacturing journey

Honeywell’s metal Additive Manufacturing journey began a decade ago with several prototype parts manufactured by external vendors (Fig. 2). Over the following five years, the company continued to evaluate the technology for insertion into applications where there was a need for a rapidly manufactured metal parts, including for test bed components. This coincided with significant consolidation in the metal AM service industry, which had the risk of impacting the company’s ability to source metal AM parts.

In 2014, led by the efforts of Engineering Fellow Donald Godfrey, the company opened its first $5 million AM facility in Phoenix, with a focus on Laser Powder Bed Fusion and Electron Beam Melting technologies from a range of different suppliers (Fig. 3). The last three years have been particularly productive, with similar facilities being opened in Bengaluru (India), Brno (Czech Republic), Mexicali (Mexico) and Shanghai (China).

In 2016, Honeywell opened a reactive metal alloy AM facility in Phoenix (Fig. 4). Converted from an old flame spray facility, this now supports the production of AM parts from aluminium and titanium alloys. By the end of 2017, Honeywell is expecting to be in production with Inconel 718 parts at a new large pilot production facility, also in Phoenix (Fig. 5). The company’s rapid growth in metal AM has been complemented by over $25 million in procured research funding, a positive endorsement of the progress the company has been making.

This expanding range of facilities is enabling Honeywell to drive forward the development of new AM applications, from concept through to pilot scale production. It is planned that following successful pilot scale production parts will transfer to external vendors.

Metal AM technologies and materials

Over the past three years, the team at Honeywell has focused on Laser Powder Bed Fusion and Electron Beam Melting and is somewhat unique in having real-world experience across these two technologies with four different equipment suppliers, namely Arcam, Concept Laser, EOS and SLM Solutions. This has allowed Godfrey and his team to directly observe the relative merits of the technologies and suppliers firsthand and make informed decisions on production-scale manufacturing.

















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