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Making aircraft safer, lighter and more efficient. The Aerospace industry requires quality, traceability, affordability, reliability, and to optimize weight and performance. AM can deliver on all those metrics in a cost competitive framework.

The challenge of weight reduction

Weight optimized shapes are prohibitively expensive or impossible to create using conventional techniques.

With AM, form follows function, because it enables weight optimized designs with balanced stress distributions to increase fuel efficiency and enhance performance.

The challenge of increasing efficiency

New engine concepts to increase fuel efficiency with higher combustion temperatures improve efficiency but require components with complex geometry such as cooling channels. High temperature Ni-based and similar alloys are difficult to machine, AM removes many of these manufacturing hurdles.

AM can provide components that deliver on cost, complexity and performance targets. AM can also have a significant impact on aero engines by integrating components to reduce part count and mass for compressor vanes, diffusers, acoustic attenuation devices, heat exchangers, and more. From brackets to instrument housings in helicopters, and from fuselage structures to battery compartments in UAVs, AM is the solution in a variety of rotorcraft and defense applications.

Why choose Oerlikon AM as your partner?

The Oerlikon AM Team includes specialists with strong backgrounds in aerospace and defense. With them we provide:

  • AS9100, ITAR registered, full spectrum AM capabilities for quality control and traceability, and affordability, with powder atomization, R&D, and production all delivered in-house
  • Aerospace specific Applications Engineering with focus on areas like Generative Design/Lightweighting, highly customized parts, weld elimination, reverse engineering and replacement of obsolete parts
  • Support for material and component qualification
  • Collaboration Opportunities: Material development, data set/ design allowables generation, R&D, application engineering, series production and prototypes

Contact us to explore with us which AM solutions we offer meet your aerospace challenges.

Aerospace AM Applications

Typical aerospace applications are complex engine parts, structural components and replacement parts. Additive Manufacturing enables the production of such parts at a lower weight and significantly reduced life-cycle costs.

For aircraft applications like brackets, ducting, and seat belt buckles, AM can be leveraged for weight and flow optimization, sound reduction, near net part substitution, and part count reduction.

AM can also have a significant impact on aero engines by integrating components for reduced part counts and mass for compressor vanes, diffusers, acoustic attenuation, heat exchangers, and more.

From brackets to instrument housings in helicopters, and from fuselage structures to battery compartments in UAVs, AM makes a difference in a variety of rotorcraft and defense applications.

Aerospace AM Materials

  • Titanium
  • Aluminium
  • Nickel-based alloy
  • Cobalt Chrome
  • Steels

Aerospace AM Case Study

Sentinel Satellite Antenna Bracket

AM can make a difference on the smallest of parts, and those small parts typically add up to a much greater whole. This is definitely true in the case of Sentinel Satellites. If a single component like an antenna bracket fails, the satellite’s mission could be doomed from the start. Ultimately, the ideal mix of project partners and the flexibility of our AM technology allowed us to produce an aerospace structure that exceeded expectations.

Feedback or questions? Get in touch with us!

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