Turbine blade

A turbine blade gets a ceramic coating because temperatures inside the turbine come close to the load limits of the materials. The wafer-thin layer serves primarily as thermal insulation. According to ALD Vacuum Technologies, it extends engine life, increases operational safety and improves efficiency, while noise and kerosene consumption can also be reduced. To achieve this, it must be applied with a targeted layer thickness distribution.

In the ALD Vacuum Technologies solution example, a titanium turbine blade for aircraft engines receives a ceramic layer just micrometres thick. The ceramic is bombarded with an electron beam and evaporates. The blades are moved translationally and rotationally in this vapour cloud so that a homogeneous thin layer forms. This allows them to withstand higher combustion temperatures.

Cameras safeguard quality by continuously observing the melting and evaporation process and making deviations from the target process visible immediately. At ALD, a process camera points at the melt pool and shows how fill level and surface change or whether material is about to overflow. The AOS highlights detected anomalies directly in the live video. Previously, an operator had to watch the process through a small viewport for the entire shift.

Manufacturing is documented without gaps when the process data and videos of every coating run are stored automatically with a time stamp and batch number. ALD EXPERT stores the process videos in a database in this way and saves KPIs such as pool level and overflow in InfluxDB. This reduces documentation effort and improves the traceability of production steps. Automatically generated quality assurance documents make it easier to comply with the strict standards in aviation.