Investor123, I hope you are right...
But I suspect it's "B"...
While GE probably doesn't have traditional Casting investments on the books their partners Sanfran and IHI Japan do and there is little incentive for them to undercut their own shops in order to allow EBM blades to be used on the LEAPs or the GEnXs for that matter... Just my guess...This might also explain why Safran hasn't moved on EBM for their Mirage Jet Fighter engine production...
There is especially little incentive to use EBM on LEAPs since the sections in the LPT that can use TiAl blades are already getting them via centrifugal casting.
My guess again would be that EBM won't be used until they run out of capacity with castings, maybe next year... this would help explain why Avio only ordered another 10 machines and delayed taking delivery of some of them until 2017...a 20 or 30 machine order delivered over 12-18 mths would not have been a burden on a program as large as the LEAP program if they were going to use them on the 1,700 engines next year..
So as I mentioned in an earlier post, I would be very pleasantly surprised if we hear from Avio again before 2017... too bad..
Still, there is hope as I got the feeling RR is about to put in an order and Honeywell will very likely put in an order in 4th Qtr... who knows even P&W might surprise us... We can only hope...
Cheers
