Shaped Cooling Hole Manufacturing

The manufacturing of EDM Departments turbine blades and shaped cooling holes comes through 25 years of research and experience. We are committed to quality and ensure cost and lead-time are balanced in accordance with customers’ individual needs and requirements. EDM Department is an ISO:9001:2015 and AS9100D certified company.

EDM Department Inc. offers advanced capabilities for EDM drilling of cooling holes in various Aero-Engine and Gas Turbine Engine components. five-axis, high speed, fast-hole drilling EDM machines coupled with customized advanced metrology gives EDM Department Inc. the ability to drill some of the highest quality shaped, round and straight cooling holes seen in the industry today.

Demand for increasingly more complex shaped cooling holes with tighter tolerances and accuracies has risen due to improved engine performance levels and efficiencies required in the new generation of aero-engines and land-based gas turbine engines (IGT). EDM Department offers a unique combination of EDM manufacturing intelligence and metrology used to create straight holes and shaped holes with diffuser shapes that blend seamlessly into the complex 3D shape of the blade and vane components, all in a single EDM pro-cess.

Diffusor shapes often vary, but are typically in the range of 0.060” (1.50mm) by 0.032” (0.80mm) and 0.040” (1.00mm) deep with a 0.020” (0.50mm) through hole. EDM Department’s fast hole EDM drilling machines can also produce holes as small as 0.04mm allowing our customers to employ ever-smaller holes in their new turbine component designs.

The coupling of advanced manufacturing techniques and metrology gives EDM Department’s customers the ability to design ever more complex shapes with the confidence that they can be manufactured accurately and efficiently. Our metrology systems offer non-destructive testing that automatically verifies hole presence, location, shape, surface roughness, breakthrough and back wall penetration (back-strike) detection directly in the EDM drilling ma-chine as well as near the manufacturing process. Inspection of each hole can be automatically stored as statistical datasets or full 3D point cloud models for full traceability and verification by both EDM Department’s customer and the end-user.

Interested in learning more? Visit our Sinker EDM page to learn more, or contact us today.