In conventional turbine blade repair, the section to be repaired is welded manually to build-up the metal and then shape finishing is performed by scraping processing. In comparison, Nikon’s metal 3D printer automatically performs additive manufacturing on the part to be repaired while also realizing high precision modeling as shown in the photo, eliminating post-processing work such as scraping, which was previously required.

After many years of use, the tip of a turbine blade is worn and eroded. To recover functionality, additive manufacturing is performed on the worn tip using a 3D printer and the original blade shape is restored. The photo on the right shows the tip of the blade restored to its original shape by additive manufacturing on the worn tip.

In turbine blade repair, the shape of the damaged part is measured by a 3D measuring device. The repair can then be performed by extracting the difference from the ideal shape to create a shape model for the part to be repaired and automatically generating a processing path in the machine coordinate system. (Depends on the shape to be repaired)