With more than 90 years of experience, Safran Electric & Power France has tested, repaired and installed power generation systems for Airbus and Boeing aircraft.
Recently, Safran Electric & Power Co., Ltd. developed a 3D printed motor housing in cooperation with British additive manufacturing software Betatype. The design of the motor housing was optimized through 3D printing technology and additive manufacturing design.
Betatype has accumulated many cases in the field of additive manufacturing design, such as 3D printed aluminum alloy heat exchanger design, 3D printed dot matrix lightweight structure design, etc.
Betatype Engine-Platform software has an open Arch format, which can avoid generating a large amount of data due to the creation of a grid structure. The abstract algorithms in the software greatly reduce the complexity of CAD model data and make model data easier to manage. Engine-Platform will process designs for production in a powder bed fusion 3D printing system. Finally, Engine-Platform will evaluate the optimal movement of the laser to produce fine details of the part.
Through this software, Safran's team in France completed the 3D printing of the motor housing, and its improved lightweight design has higher strength and higher rigidity.
When the Betatype team designed the sandwich structure, they used ultra-high-density lattices between the sandwiches. The sandwich structure included more than 10 million elements. According to Betatype, applying the technology and multi-scale method in Engine-Platform can control the scan path and exposure settings to each element of the sandwich structure design. In this case, the powder bed laser melting process exceeds its standard process, thus Create the required ultra-high density lattice structure.
Safran's 3D printed generator casing has been transformed from a component consisting of several complex machined parts into a functionally integrated component in the past, so the overall number of parts and manufacturing time have been reduced.