Additive Manufacturing in the Aerospace Industry

Additive manufacturing has been around for more than 20 years in one form or another. Liburdi pioneered additive manufacturing for repair of gas turbine parts in the late 80's and early 90's when most welding systems were manual or pointto- point programmed DOS systems. Liburdi learned from an early stage that service run parts are not to blueprint. These parts are aged in the engine and suffer from changes in materials properties as well as geometric changes to the parts dimensionally. Wear from erosion, fretting, corrosion, aerodynamic loading in twist and untwist are but a few of the changes that make repair of the parts a challenge.