Aerobloggen

The 27th of april was the last fair for the season, LARV (Luleå ArbetsmarknadsVecka) in Luleå. The trainee fighters sent to visit Norrbottens pearl, Luleå, were Merim and Alex together with two HR representatives and two managers. It was awesome to get the chance to talk with students about aerospace and our role within the business, we hope that some of you we meet have found their way to this blog.

The journey started at 03.30 on Tuesday from Trollhättan to Landvetter and then on to Luleå, with a transit in Arlanda Stockholm. The arrival to Luleå hosted fresh winds and snow covered lawns, what could be better than this to build your character. As a previous LTU-student, I (Alex) had to act as a local and guide the team around campus prior to us setting up our stall. After a lot of dividing and adding, we could happily agree on that setting up a Samsung-TV on a portable wall is a lot harder than designing and constructing jet engines… Towards the evening we went in to town and grabbed a couple of beers and had something to eat at the newly established Corners Sportsbar. On Wednesday the fair happened and it was overshadowed by all the coffee we drank. It was really fun that our 3D-printed rocket got us much attention which enabled us to talk about other stuff we do except the Ariane rocket nozzle. There were a lot of interesting, engaging and nice talks with students about materials, manufacturing and the future of the business. We just want to say thank you to everyone that visited us during LARV.

For me (Merim) it was my first time in Luleå, I have previously never been further north than Stockholm, and I can happily say that it was a really nice experience to visit, as Alex refers to it, Norrbottens pearl. It was everything I expected and more, frozen lakes and ocean, a bit of snow that has not yet melted and cold winds. I can though imagine that we were a bit lucky as we visited Luleå during the “right” half year so we did not get the vitamin D deficiency.

After the fair me and Alex attended the banquet which was arranged by LARV. They indulged us in a fantastic lobster soup followed by salmon and some kind of potato bun, and lastly some cheesecake, very good food. We also got the try out beer from Luleås own brewery which was a cool experience.

To summarize my first visit to Luleå I would say ten out of ten would do it again!

Thesis work

As a trainee you can help out to manage all the thesis works at the company as most of them eventually end up at our table and we post them on the trainee blog. Sometimes it happens that we hear something about a thesis that is not yet posted, which is why it is good for you as a student to contact us as we might have more in storage than what you see on the blog, however this is not guaranteed. In worst case, we will just make a note of your interest and area and we’ll reach out to you when something interesting comes up.

As I mentioned earlier, we publish all our thesis work on this site so take a look to see if you find anything interesting. We usually publish new work during autumn which is scheduled to start in spring, so the posted documents might be outdated and some of them might already have started. However, you can always contact the contact person to double check, maybe there will be a continuation on the current thesis work.

Open to work?

We also got the chance to talk to you about how it is to work for GKN Aerospace and what opportunities there are right now. I would encourage you to take a look at our career page, which you can find HERE, take a look and apply for any position that looks interesting!

Hi all,

I have during my latest rotation been at the same department as Emelie, but my task has been out of a different sort where I have focused on Additive Manufacturing (AM).

I have gotten the chance to meet many experts within the field of AM at the company and it has been really rewarding with interesting discussions. Well, discussion is maybe farfetched as I had to spend my full focus on taking notes as I am a rookie within the field of AM. But nevertheless I am really grateful for all the inputs and insights that I have received around the topic of additive manufacturing. I got a whole new view of it in a way that is not possible by reading a book.

Anyhow, some of you might wonder what additive manufacturing is, (pause for suspense) I will tell you. Ordinary manufacturing methods usually involves a subtractive method, which means that you have a big piece of metal that you turn and mill until it gets the form that you desire. Usually a lot of material is used up in the process (removed) which puts a high load on the environment, a load one preferably would eliminate! But nevertheless this method has been the traditional method to use as other options are scarce. This changed when additive manufacturing was introduced to the market, which is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing.

Additive manufacturing works by deposition of layer-by-layer until the desired part has been constructed, which you specify with the help of 3D-CAD. Today, you can perform the manufacturing of parts in some different ways and there exists seven different technologies to perform additive manufacturing. You can construct parts in plastic as well as in metal, however metal manufacturing is still energy intense which is unavoidable. In metal AM there are several different ways in which the material can be added to the manufacturing process, you can do it either with wire or powder. When using wire, you need to add the material locally to the build, where a laser is melting the tip of the wire. Using powder you get two options. You can add it locally just as in wire manufacturing, a nozzle deposits the material locally and a laser then melts the powder in place. You can also use a bed of powder where a laser, or another energy source, then sweeps the bed where the part is to be built and a component emerges towards the end. The part is then build “within” the bed itself. Whichever way you do it, some post-processing is required to achieve the desired finish.

Innovation and technology has always been the forefront at GKN Aerospace where we as a company always strive to attain knowledge and experience within different fields. This enables us to tailor-design a manufacturing process for our product portfolio. For example, we have a goal to construct our space components with the help of AM, which will usher our portfolio into the next generation. If you want to read more about our AM capabilities and goals, you can follow this LINK.