MTU Aero Engines inaugurates center of excellence for high-tech blisk production

After 20 months of construction and installation activities, MTU Aero Engines today inaugurated its new center of excellence for blisks at its premises in Munich. Numerous guests of honor from politics and industry had come to attend the cere-mony, among them State Minister and Head of the Bavarian State Chancellery Thomas Kreuzer (Member of Bavaria’s State Parliament), who lauded the company’s strong commitment to keeping aviation business and jobs in Germany. With a total work space of 10,000 m², the leading-edge blisk manufacturing system, combined with one of the world’s most advanced machine pools, is accommodated in a high-technology, energy-efficient building. Once it is fully up and running, the hall will have 20 milling machines, seven combined turning and milling machines, and eight coordinate measuring machines; they will allow MTU to expand its production capacities from currently 600 to as many as 3,500 blisks a year by 2016. Some 200 employees will be working in Hall 077 at state-of-the-art workplaces. The investment into the innovative shop building, including its machinery, is worth around €65m. In the new manufacturing hall, one of the world’s largest flexible systems for the production of high-pressure and intermediate-pressure compressor blisks has been set up. Blisks – blade integrated disks – are high-tech components where the disk and the blades form one single part; they find increasing use in modern engine compressors. MTU Aero Engines is among the world’s leading blisk manufacturers. Once the production ramp-up is complete, numerous compressor stages for commercial and military engines – notably the fuel-thrifty, quieter PW1000G family of engines incorporating geared-turbofan technology, the PW800, and the TP400-D6 – will be produced in the new building.