Development of a method for manufacturing ceramic tooling for precision casting of blades made of heat-resistant alloys using additive technologies

Abstract

The technology traditionally used to produce castings of gas turbine engine (GTE) blades involves a large number of alterations, high labor costs due to the large amount of manual labor required, and complex and expensive equipment and tooling. This technology is only suited for large-scale production due to its use of expensive reusable metal molds.The ceramic shell mold for turbine cooled and uncooled blades can be manufactured more quickly and cheaply. This is especially important for fast hardware redesign and reconfiguration.This proposal describes an approach for producing a shell mold including with an internal rod using three-dimensional (3D) printing with refractory ceramic pastes that does not involve a lengthy and time-consuming process of designing and manufacturing forming equipment for the production of castings based on smelted models.