Air Force turbine engine repair facility operations

Tulsa (or Oklahoma City) Air Force repair facility has been doing directed-energy deposition — under the older name "laser welding" — to apply carbide composite coatings on turbine blade tips for fifty years. Used to argue that "additive manufacturing" is a rebranding of welding repair practice.

These tips wear out and we want to recondition these blades. Not this one, but some of the fancier blades could cost two or three thousand dollars apiece. So we go along with these little directed energy deposition processes. We never called it that before — the advanced additive manufacturing — they actually called it laser welding. The Air Force went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, maybe Oklahoma City — they have a big repair facility for their engines — and they would put on little carbide composite coatings on the tip so that it intentionally cuts into the surface as it's spinning at high speed. We've been doing that for fifty years. That's additive manufacturing, folks. It's done on the original parts, it's done on the repair parts. We do all kinds of additive manufacturing because we're saving a two thousand dollar blade and letting it go for another thirty thousand hours. There's a lot of value in that. So that's another place of additive manufacturing — repair and maintenance.