3DEO vs. Investment Casting in Aerospace

The challenges associated with this component are a combination of failings of the supply chain and fundamental limitations of the investment casting process.

Our customer, an aerospace tier 2 supplier, was unable to deliver subassemblies to their customer because their supplier was months behind schedule. The casting supplier saw this order as a relatively small proportion of their revenue for difficult-to-produce parts, and consequently had deprioritized them. The tier 2 supplier could not get commitments from their supplier to tighten delivery timelines, let alone ship parts.

Ultimately, the final customer, the aircraft manufacturer, was left in a challenging position sitting on over $12 million of incomplete product, awaiting subassemblies from the tier 2 supplier.

In addition to suppliers missing delivery timelines, a systemic challenge for this aerospace company was the poor quality of the investment cast parts themselves. According to this customer, the cast parts they receive from their vendors struggle with porosity:

And, this problem is not predictable—until the parts are radiographically or ultrasonically inspected, there’s no way to ensure casting quality. Recently, this manufacturer received a shipment of castings which nearly ALL failed NDT inspection, requiring rework. It was a lucky close call that they could even rework the components, as they previously had a failed run in 2019 that had to be scrapped entirely.

While it will take time to execute, as a result of all these headaches the Director of Engineering for the product group that we’ve been working with is actively working to migrate parts away from casting to more reliable & timely firms that are using technologies that produce higher performing, more predictable parts. They tapped 3DEO to be just such a supplier.

3DEO was able to help this customer solve its challenges with this part and get their subassemblies back in production—which was the beginning of a true partnership. This customer is leveraging 3DEO’s resources in a way that is creating long-term competitive advantage for the aerospace company, as they continue to bring additional components to be adapted from investment casting to additive manufacturing at scale. But what got the ball rolling?

To get started, 3DEO’s applications engineering team met with the customer’s engineering and procurement teams to fully understand the application in question and ensure 3DEO can deliver a working solution.

After reviewing the drawings and CAD designs, 3DEO immediately went to work on the first articles. Using its proprietary technology, 3DEO optimized the customer’s design for additive manufacturing in an effort to deliver a part closer to the final shape and eliminate post processing.

First articles were delivered in two weeks. One of 3DEO’s main advantages is that the sample parts are made on the same printers that produce production parts. As a result, any testing done on first articles remains valid for initial production runs. This dramatically accelerates launch cycles for new components.

Quality testing revealed that 3DEO’s material properties, dimensional tolerances, and surface finish were all superior to investment casting. Given the situation with the complete lack of parts from the investment casting supplier, the aerospace customer was able to seamlessly transition production to 3DEO.

Now, 3DEO is reviewing and qualifying other IC parts with this tier 2 supplier to help more of their product lines. A true manufacturing partnership is developing between the companies to ensure product is continually flowing with local manufacturing capability.