Manufacturing of 3 D Shrouded Impeller of a Centrifugal Compressor on 3D-Printing machine using FDM Technology

Abstract

Blades of impellers are intricate and are having complex profiles which are difficult to be manufactured by convectional milling processes. To produce such multifaceted precise dimensional functional components, expertise combined with new technology machining such as 5-Axis CNC machining is required which is costly and tedious task. The impellers components have maximum diameters of 200mm and thickness of blades are less than 1.5mm. A rapid manufacturing technique aids in manufacture of blade profiles which are robust in design and prototypes can be easily made for testing and analysis this aid in design validation. In particular, the investigation was focused on shrouded and unshrouded 3D impeller of centrifugal compressors. The present paper describes about the basic functioning of FDM based 3D printer while printing open and shrouded impeller and various steps involved in it and finally advantages and disadvantages associated with 3D printing technology.