Directed Energy Deposition Additive Manufacturing Supplier Sourcing for Aerospace

Abstract

Pratt & Whitney (P&W) is a major aerospace Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) of gas turbine engines for both commercial and military sectors. Historically aerospace part designs require more iterations compared to other industries due to the high level of complexity and the need to minimize weight on the aircraft. P&W has been utilizing Additive Manufacturing (AM) for rapid prototyping and Research & Development (R&D) cost reduction for three decades. However, most of the past metal additive manufacturing applications have utilized Powder Bed Fusion technology, which has limited size and unique capabilities. P&W wants to explore the potential of Directed Energy Deposition (DED), an AM technology that could be used for bigger parts and adding features to existing parts.

The project objective is to bring on DED suppliers to enable the acquisition of development metal hardware for P&W’s advanced programs. We do this first by learning about the technology and gathering information on prominent suppliers via virtual interviews and site visits. We then come up with a list of criteria based on P&W’s advance program outsourcing needs and evaluate the suppliers based on the criteria. The final product of this project is a report to P&W documenting all the findings on suppliers and final scores for each of the suppliers based on the criteria we developed for evaluation.