Phase II Amount
$2,999,192
Military fighter aircraft with gas turbine engines employ afterburners to increase performance. 5th Generation fighter afterburners utilize nozzle components with thousands of small cooling holes to reduce component failure from excessive heat exposure. ---------- High value gas turbine engine components require hard surface coatings, such as hexavalent chrome or HVOF applied tungsten carbide, to prevent wear of the component substrate. Replacement of these coatings require multiple processes and operations on a variety of machines and equipment. Advancements in laser cladding, specifically Extreme High-speed Laser Application (EHLA), make it possible to quickly apply tungsten carbide hard surface coatings with minimal effect to the substrate properties. Introduction of EHLA on hybrid machine tools enable complete laser clad hard surface coating replacement followed by precision finish grinding on a single machine thereby greatly reducing time to repair and overall depot repair cost.
