GKN Aerospace targets broader additive manufacturing rollout across major engine programs
UK firm advances certification pipeline for structural components as production data builds confidence with regulators and OEMs
GKN Aerospace is moving to extend its additive manufacturing footprint across multiple engine programs and component types, building on production experience gained from its fan case mount ring (FCMR) — the structural part it produces for Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines.
Since qualifying the first additively produced FCMR in 2023, the company claims to have delivered over 600 units, with full-rate production achieved in 2025.
Chief technology officer Russ Dunn was reported by FlightGlobal as telling journalists in London recently that GKN had an “incredibly long, complex roadmap of different products” it aims to bring to market, ranging from components similar to the FCMR to “even slightly more complex structures”.
Inner and outer ring structures are “very much in progress of being certified”, he said, alongside split engine cases where “we have a product there being certified as we speak”.
Engine OEM partnerships and large-scale development
GKN’s 2025 annual report identified the geared turbofan FCMR as the “first of many planned technology insertions being developed with Pratt & Whitney, GE Aerospace and Rolls-Royce”.
Work with GE Aerospace includes additive fabrication activities for the GEnx, which powers the Boeing 787, and the in-development GE9X for the 777X program. GKN also produced what it described as the largest-ever all-additive part — a titanium engine case just under 2 meters in diameter — for the CFM International RISE open-fan technology demonstrator.
Production is primarily through laser metal deposition by wire (LMD-W), though a powder bed process is also being developed, with turbine struts for the LM2500 industrial gas engine serving as an initial certification pathway.
“By certifying that, we then build up a body of evidence that enables us to build the confidence of the customer and airworthiness authorities, and we then transition that to the flying engine equivalent,” Dunn said.
Certification timelines compress as data matures
The original FCMR took approximately seven years to reach service entry. Dunn said that the timeline is expected to shorten considerably.
“We are now talking about maybe a couple of years rather than seven,” he said, citing the accumulation of process consistency data across GKN’s facilities in Sweden, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Back-to-back testing of the same component across those three sites produced material properties that “came out to within 1% [with] a really, really low level of variation.” GKN is also pursuing additive manufacturing for component repair, with the aim of reducing scrap rates and easing supply chain pressure.
