Smart Laser Hole Drilling for Gas Turbine Combustors

Laser processing is currently employed in the manufacture of gas turbine engines, mostly to laser drill thousands of combustors' cooling holes.

A Smart Laser Drilling system, which incorporates air flow inspection-in-process of the holes and intelligent real-time process parameter corrections, has been developed and installed at Pratt & Whitney Canada. The cooling holes produced meet the highest quality requirements of the Aerospace industry. Therefore, the cooling air film created by the holes is more efficient. Improvements in productivity are achieved as the holes are drilled on-the-fly (DOF).