Additive Manufacturing for the Energy Industry

Additive Manufacturing (AM) opens up huge opportunities by revolutionizing the manufacturing and repair of components

Download the comprehensive AM overview

Be it rapid prototyping or manufacturing parts for aero-derivative, gas and steam turbines or compressors, they can be designed faster, with increased flexibility, better materials, and optimized efficiency. This way, 3D printing enables cutting edge technologies with reduced time-to-market and quick upgrading of existing assets. Being both a pioneer and a leader in the industrialization of AM, Siemens Energy is in an excellent position to give its customers the products and tools they need for the next generation of power products.

Siemens Energy Additive Manufacturing Webinar

29 Oct

Webinar: How Additive Manufacturing contributes to a Decarbonized World

Our webinar throws a light on the topic from different angles: Tobias Müller (E.ON) shares his experiences from user perspective, Markus Glasser (EOS) reports on the latest developments as a technology supplier and Vladimir Navrotsky and Markus Seibold give an overview on Siemens Energy’s experiences and solutions.

What’s up in AM?

3D-printed vanes have proved successful in the real world

DREWAG AG, a municipal utility in the German town of Dresden, operates a 25-year-old combined-cycle power plant with three Siemens V64.3 gas turbines. As part of a comprehensive lifetime extension and modernization upgrade, Siemens Energy replaced conventional turbine vanes with 3D-printed ones.

IDEA – Additive Manufacturing for Series Production

The inauguration of the prototype of a serial production line at the Siemens gas turbine factory in Berlin marks an important milestone for the IDEA project. The R&D project is part of the funding initiative “Line integration of additive manufacturing processes”, funded by German Ministry of Education and Research.

The partners in the IDEA project include the hardware and software suppliers ALLMATIC, BCT, Jenoptik, ModuleWorks, and Siemens Digital Industries, the leading solution providers for industrial 3D printing EOS and TRUMPF, and the 3D printing users Liebherr-Aerospace, MBFZ toolcraft GmbH, MTU Aero Engines, and Siemens Energy.

The project is supported by the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT), the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology (IPT), and the RWTH Aachen University with its Machine Tool Lab (WZL) and its School of Digital Additive Production (DAP).

More about IDEA (German only)

Our Portfolio

Rapid Prototyping

Parts can be rapidly printed and checked for certain properties before serial production beings, massively speeding up innovation cycles.

Rapid Repair

With AM, parts for industrial gas turbines and compressors can be repaired up to 60% faster and even upgraded to the latest part design.

Spare Parts on Demand

Traditional stockpiling of parts becomes a thing of the past. Since an AM-printer can precisely reproduce many parts from 3D-datasets, there is no need to have them physically on hand.

Rapid Manufacturing

AM enables the use of new materials and the creation of innovative parts with higher performance and new product features, while at the same reducing time lead times.

Gallery

3D-printed vanes have proved successful in the real world

A collaborative robot supports the team in Finspang in their daily work.

Additive Manufacturing paves the way for testing new energy sources (C) Göteborg Energi

Top 5 AM Trends

Additive Manufacturing for Energy

Repair and Coating for Turbine Service LMD - Laser Metal Deposition

Reducing lead time of gas turbine components with NX

Video: If you can dream it, you can print it

Video: AM can boost your turbine

SLM - Selective Laser Melting

Siemens Goes Additive 4.0

Vladimir Navrotsky at the AM workshop in Finspång

3D-printed vanes have proved successful in the real world

A collaborative robot supports the team in Finspang in their daily work.

Additive Manufacturing paves the way for testing new energy sources (C) Göteborg Energi

Top 5 AM Trends

Additive Manufacturing for Energy

Repair and Coating for Turbine Service LMD - Laser Metal Deposition

Reducing lead time of gas turbine components with NX

Video: If you can dream it, you can print it

Video: AM can boost your turbine

SLM - Selective Laser Melting

Siemens Goes Additive 4.0

Insights

Toward an Autonomous Workshop and Digital Warehouse

Whitepaper

A new whitepaper by Vladimir Navrotsky and Andreas Graichen allows a glimpse into the future of AM. Their idea of an Autonous Workshop combines the latest in digitalization and automation to allow for seamless AM design, supply chain and production processes.

Youtube

Markus Seibold, VP Additive Manufacturing, has been interviewed by Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, Managing Partner at AMPOWER, one of the leading consultancies in the field of industrial Additive Manufacturing.

Culture – the underestimated lever for speeding-up the adoption of additive manufacturing

Opinion

Changing the company culture could have a significant impact on the adoption of additive manufacturing says Markus Seibold, VP Additive Manufacturing at Siemens Energy.

SatellitePro ME Article

Ole Geisen, Head of Engineering Services AM for Siemens Energym ist sure that AM is not only a temporary trend.Read more in the current issue of Satellite Pro Middle East Magazine (Page 30 ff)

Company Portrait

Materials Solutions is a young company that specializes in the additive manufacturing of high-performance materials.

Co-operation

The agreement lays the groundwork for the creation of AM training solutions. Siemens Gas and Power will bring its technical application content as a leading industry user of AM to the partnership and combine it with ASME’s industry-leading competency model framework, agile course development methodology, and learning and development platform.

AM paves the way for testing new energy sources

Co-operation with Goteborg Energi

The production of gas turbine burners using additive manufacturing makes a decisive contribution to accelerating the research and development process for new technologies, that contribute to a greener energy supply. The installation of a test turbine at Rya for the validation of 3D-printed burners makes it possible to test different fossil-free fuels, such as hydrogen or biogas, in the future.

Event

Phil Hatherley, General Manager at Materials Solutions, explains what participants can expect during the site visit on February 25. "We have one of the largest fleets of Laser Powder Bed Fusion printers in the world with considerable experience behind our understanding of the technology and what it takes to make functional AM components for the most challenging applications."

Story

Complex metal parts can now be 3D printed, offering unimagined design possibilities in a faster and more flexible manner than conventional manufacturing.

Youtube

Equinor used a drone tof fly a 3D-printed part for the lifeboat system from the Mongstad base to the Troll A platform in the North Sea.

E&P Plus Article

The Siemens Energy AM Monitor’s machine learning algorithms impartially evaluate the recoating during the printing of a 3D-printed component.

Press release

Göteborg Energi and Siemens cooperate for fossil-free cogeneration by testing state-of-the-art gas turbine technology that enables the operation of renewable fuels in the Rya Combined Heat and Power Plant.

Training

The aim of our 1- or 4-day trainings is to inspire novel thinking in part production and educate on the usage and design of AM parts.They are conducted by consultants and engineers from Siemens and Materials Solutions with multi-year experience especially Laser Powder-Bed Fusion (L-PBF). The training is based on company-wide use-cases and experiences in R&D and industrialization projects.

Our view

Vladimir Navrotsky and Markus Seibold made a list of their predictions of what will be important in AM in 2020 and beyond.

Podcast

“Talking Digital Industries” moderator Chris Brow learns all about Additive Manufacturing. He is joined by Dr. Karsten Heuser, VP of Additive Manufacturing Siemens Digital Industries. Join them as they travel through the history of 3D-printing to the present day and discuss the impact this technology has on giant and tiny applications

Digital Industries

Siemens' AM network is an online order-to-delivery collaboration platform for the industrial additive manufacturing community. It connects the AM ecosystem, simplifies the collaboration process, and streamlines the AM production process.

Gas Turbine World Article

Braskem, the largest petrochemical company in Latin America, relies on Siemens know-how and AM expertise to shift to hydrogen.

Story

Turbomachinery Magazine

Siemens Energy recently began its Onsite Specialty Services that includes welding and coating technologies and CNC and robotic on-site machining. The company’s additive manufacturing capabilities comprise mechanized cladding, micro laser welding, cold spray silver coating and laser metal deposition.

Award

Siemens has been recognized for creating new and advanced technologies that play a role in leading the offshore oil and gas industry! The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) awards highlight innovative technologies each year with the 'Spotlight on New Technology' award which showcases the latest and most advanced technologies that are leading the industry into the future.

World Pipelines Article

Radial impellers play an integral role in the performance and reliability of turbocompressors. AM can optimize the production of centrifugal compressors.

Youtube

Joel Telling - successful Youtuber and 3D Nerd - visited the Goerlitz AM workshop.Watch his latest video!

Story

The 1923 Ruston B2 was basically a wreck. The vintage vehicle was missing important parts, which made it impossible to restore. These parts, however, have been reproduced by Siemens’ Materials Solutions subsidiary using 3D printing technology.

Backstage

Additive manufacturing makes it possible to create completely new kinds of components with customized attributes. But companies that want to take full advantage of this new production method need to revamp their thinking. That’s why Siemens has opened its AM Design Lab in Berlin.

Experience the Siemens AM portfolio in a virtual space

Siemens AG - Digital Industries

Siemens runs the interactive Additive Manufacturing Experience Center (AMEC) in Erlangen, to show interested customers from all over the world the benefits of the Digital Enterprise Portfolio.

Essay

Products that were once forged, milled or cast are increasingly being produced with 3D printing, a process in which objects are created layer by layer. Find out why 3D printing is revolutionizing manufacturing.

Case Studies Siemens Energy is driving the industrialization and commercialization of AM processes. Here are some examples of 3D printed parts working in the real world.

DREWAG

Dresden, Germany

3D-printed vanes proved successful

DREWAG AG operates a 25-year-old CCPP with three Siemens V64.3 gas turbines. As part of a lifetime extension and modernization upgrade, Siemens Energy replaced conventional turbine vanes with 3D-printed ones.
Phase 1 focused on the reproduction of the vanes, while in phase 2 improved, re-designed vanes will be installed. The initial phase already brought remarkable results: The vanes are characterized by high accuracy and show an excellent operational behavior after nearly 8,000 EOHs.
The new generation of vanes, that will be installed in June 2021, have an advanced air cooling design, that can contribute to increased efficiency and decreased emissions.

Additive Manufacturing - Gas Turbine Swirlers

Siemens Energy Customers

Globally

Industrialized swirler production

Production of more than 1,000 gas turbine swirlers per year with qualified industrial production process.
Lead time for critical component reduced by 20%, with reduced post-processing by 80%.
Optimized design for AM enables part consolidation from 10 pieces to one single piece.

E.ON

CCPP Philippsthal, Germany

Long-lasting success

3D-printed gas turbine burners have been “on duty” for more than 8,000 operating hours in E.ON’s plant, which provides electrical energy and steam for a potash mine.
The burners were manufactured in Finspång, Sweden. Each burner is manufactured in one piece, whereas they used to require 13 individual parts and 18 welds.
"As an energy service provider, precision and durability of our turbines are absolute necessities for us," says Niklas Lange, project manager at E.ON Energy Projects. "In our experience, additive manufacturing delivers this and even improves performance compared to older models.”

Nuclear Power Plant

Krško, Slovenia

Extending life after 35 years

Siemens achieved a breakthrough with the first successful commercial installation and continuing safe operation of a 3D-printed part in a nuclear power plant in Krško, Slovenia.
Produced in 1981, the replacement part is the impeller for a fire protection water pump that is in constant rotating operation. Its original manufacturer is no longer in business.
3D printing allows mature operating plants to continue operating and achieving or, as in the Krško case, even extending, their full life expectancy.

JSW Steel Ltd

Salem, India

Milestone for steam turbines

Siemens installed 3D-printed sealing rings on SST-300 steam turbines operating in India.
The 3D-printed parts are two oil sealing rings used in keeping oil separate from steam inside the steam turbine using pressurized air.
Siemens engineered, designed and developed the parts as part of a collaborative project between Siemens experts in Germany, India, and Sweden.

Power Plant

Brno, Czech Republic

First gas turbine with 3D printed parts

Materials Solutions in Worcester, UK, produced 3D-printed burner components for a Siemens heavy-duty SGT-1000F gas turbine in a power plant in Brno in the southeast of the Czech Republic. The plant supplies district heating as well as electricity.
The turbine’s operations are now supported by spare parts that no other large Siemens gas turbine before it has used in commercial operation.
It has operated since 2016 without causing any forced outages.

The Technologies

In use at Siemens Finspang and Materials Solutions in Worcester and Orlando

Selective laser melting (SLM), also known as direct metal laser melting (DMLM) or laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), is a rapid prototyping, 3D printing, or additive manufacturing (AM) technique designed to use a high power-density laser to melt and fuse metallic powders together. SLM is often considered a subcategory of selective laser sintering (SLS). The SLM process has the ability to fully melt the metal material into a solid three-dimensional part unlike SLS.

In use at Siemens Gas and Power in Nuremberg

Laser cladding is a form of surface coating that incorporates the use of lasers and a feeding mechanism to coat the substrate with a layer of desired metal or ceramic material. The laser melts the metal and coats the moving substrate with a fine layer. The feed metal is fully melted while the laser also transfers some of its energy to the substrate. This allows for the creation of a strong metallurgical bond between the substrate and the coating.