Word of Hills’ feat spread quickly through the company, all the way to Chris Lorence, chief engineer and general manager for GE Aviation. Instead of displaying it on his desk, he donated it to GE’s Cincinnati-based Community Service Fund, and the model was auctioned off for $900. It was a challenge.”Īfter many hours of toying with dimensions and generating a design, Hills finished his first open-fan model last fall. That’s something that is used on turboprops. “For this engine, since it’s unducted, to get reverse thrust capabilities you have to pitch these blades, and you can see they rotate on the hub. But the RISE project is seeking to change that. The fan blades of even the most advanced jet engines remain at a fixed pitch - kind of like the blades inside the fan you have at home. I was able to develop a model from that,” he says. I roughly scaled things on how big the engine would be based on what information was out there. “The video gives you straightforward images of the concept. But the video helped him piece together instructions for his printer. Hills never printed a project without plans prior to this endeavor, let alone an architecture that was so challenging.
PRINTER RESET KEYS SOFTWARE
I thought it would be great to build an actual model of the open fan, so I began reverse-engineering the design in software for 3D printing.” “I wanted to build something that represents what I’ve worked on,” he says. The design could lead to fans with diameters as large as 12 feet and potentially dramatically increase the engine’s efficiency. One component of the RISE project is the open-rotor concept - an idea that keeps the engine fan blades on the outside of its body rather than covered, as is common with jet engines today.
(CFM is a 50-50 joint venture between GE and Safran Aircraft Engines. In June 2021, he watched a detailed video about CFM International’s newly announced RISE technology demonstration program, which aims to develop technology for engines as much as 20% more fuel-efficient than the most advanced engines currently in service. He’s gotten so good over the years that he can now bring this experience to work, including in some of the most advanced projects. “That project gave me a lot of experience and technique.” “I’ve been a volunteer there for 14 years and have been coming up with STEM projects for education and family events,” he says.
He spent six months building a pair of six-foot Saturn V rocket replicas for the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The degree of difficulty of his projects rose along with his skills. “I thought it was cool and printed another one that I put on my desk.” “It was a real simple model that spun with some bearings,” he says. Alex Hills developed a passion for 3D printing like most hobbyists: He bought a printer and began “tinkering around” with some simple print builds.Ī decade ago, Hills, who works as a test hardware engineer at GE Aviation, printed his first generic jet engine design from plans he found online.