Case Study: Howmet (an Alcoa division) achieves faster, automated turbine blade inspections with 3D Systems' Geomagic Control

Howmet Accelerates Quality Inspection Processes with Geomagic Control

Howmet, a division of Alcoa that manufactures compressor and turbine blades for jet engines, faced growing pressure to deliver “more, better, faster” quality inspections—especially for first-article and sample-based inspections that require 100% dimensional verification and detailed analyses like blade twist. Traditional CMM methods were slow and produced too few data points to reliably evaluate complex blade geometry and meet customers’ statistical inspection demands.

Howmet replaced CMMs with a GOM ATOS II white‑light scanner and Geomagic Control software, capturing up to 1.3 million points in seconds, saving scans as STL files, and automatically comparing them to CAD models. Geomagic Control automates twist analysis, GD&T callouts, batch processing, capability studies, and report generation (HTML/PDF/Word/Excel) with pass/fail and color-map outputs—enabling faster, more thorough inspections, easier trend analysis across many parts, and significantly reduced inspection time.

Howmet

Steve Vanderkooi

Engineering Support Manager