Progress Report on the Gatorizing™ Forging Process

The GATORIZING Forging Process (U.S. Patent No. 3,519,503) is being successfully applied to the production of large IN100 alloy compressor and turbine engine disks for an advanced production jet engine. The process has enabled these disks to be made with a reduction of billet input weight of approximately 50% compared to the input weight that would be required to forge identical configurations from weaker superalloys. As a result of a large background of experience with the GATORIZING process and improvements in disk inspection procedures, it is now feasible to reduce the billet input weight for the same forgings by another 50%, for a net reduction of 75%. This reduction, of course, represents a very significant cost reduction in terms of billet input cost and part machining cost.

The applicability of the GATORIZING forging process to the forging of low cost rotor components of the advanced superalloys for industrial gas turbine engines is also discussed.