Increase Flexibility for Design Validation and Investment Casting of Large Turbomachinery Casings and Ducting with 3D Printed Patterns
90%
cost reduction over conventional wax patterns
30x
faster time to market
100%
reduction in tooling

Produce High-Quality Casings and Ducting Faster While Eliminating Tooling Costs

Gas turbine engine of feed gas compressor located inside pressurized enclosure

Industrial gas turbines require large, complex casings and ducting at low production volumes, making additive manufacturing of patterns for investment casting very economical relative to traditional tooling-based wax injection methods.

Overcome the geometry and time constraints common with conventional machined molds, replacing it with a fast, tool-less process that opens the door to greater design freedom while improving product performance.

Solving Three Gas Turbine Casings and Ducting Challenges With Additive Manufacturing

  • A man holding a 3D printed duct

    Using advanced software, stereolithography (SLA) technology and materials, our 3D printed hollow casting patterns are strong enough to support parts during manufacturing. While durable, these patterns can still collapse under their own expansion, and their unique material and design allow for complete drainage.

  • Increase Exhaust Efficiency

    The QuickCast® process is used with tremendous design freedom to create stronger, more reliable investment casting patterns for industrial gas turbine casings and ducting. This creates the possibility for smoother and more efficient gas flow structures than what is possible with traditional investment castings, which in turn improves overall turbine efficiency.
  • Casings and Ducting for Turbomachinery: Faster Product Development

  • Faster Product Development

    Investment casting with the QuickCast process reduces lead-time and costs. It requires no hard tooling, so patterns can be produced on-demand, allowing customers to economically go from CAD file to casting in days.
  • a man standing next to a casing QuickCast pattern

  • Increase Reliability

    Reducing the number of components needed for gas turbine casings and ducting assemblies means fewer points of failure, resulting in greater uptime and reliability.

Decades of Experience in Complex Investment Casting and Pattern Development

  • Application Development

    Through our Application Innovation Group, we leverage years of turbomachinery and additive manufacturing expertise to help find optimized solutions for your applications. The support we provide enables an engineering and designing approach that repeatedly meets strict requirements.

  • Complete Investment Casting Solution

    3D Systems offers a comprehensive additive investment casting solution, with powerful software solutions for CAD design and build styles (QuickCast Diamond) specifically for investment casting, reverse engineering, and inspection, best-in-class materials for printing and post-processing (Accura® Fidelity), and SLA hardware for plastic casting patterns.

  • Large Build Capacity

    3D Systems printers boast some of the largest build capacities available, able to produce highly accurate, lightweight QuickCast patterns up to 1500 mm in length, ideal for the ductwork used in turbomachinery and industrial gas turbines. Further, 3D Systems has seamless workflows for turbine parts that exceed the build volume, guiding users through the sectioning and post-print joining steps needed to produce a perfect pattern, whatever its size.

More Turbomachinery Applications

The engine of airplane

Combustor Components
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Impellers
A 3D printed metal stator

Stator Vanes
  • Vaupell Case Study 940x494

  • The Digital Foundry

    Digital processes and new additive manufacturing technologies are poised to deliver massive time and cost savings: Production workflows that traditionally take weeks can now be done in hours.
    Download the White Paper

Learn More About Turbomachinery Casings and Ducting Manufacturing Solutions

Highly accurate, humidity/moisture resistant, antimony-free casting patterns

Accura Fidelity (SLA)

Highly accurate, humidity/moisture resistant, antimony-free casting patterns

Geomagic Design X reverse engineering and 3D scanning software

Geomagic Design X

Reverse Engineering Software

3D Systems ProX 950 3D Printer (SLA) large-format 3D printing

ProX 950

All the benefits of SLA 3D printing in extra-large format

a 3D rendering made from Control X software

Geomagic Control X

3D Inspection and Metrology Software

Talk to an Expert

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  • Application Innovation Group

    Our team can help you solve your most difficult design and production challenges with additive manufacturing solutions. Together we’ll identify your needs, working with you to optimize your designs, prototype, validate and define a manufacturing flow.