KW Micro Power designs and manufactures high power density Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) for commercial aviation and military applications. They are a small Florida-based manufacturer looking for new, cutting-edge solutions. Over the past five years, Enrique Enriquez, the president of KW Micro Power, has worked tirelessly to create a microturbine generator roughly the size of a microwave oven that can crank out more power than systems ten times as large.
Enriquez is no stranger to aerospace design and manufacturing. Over his long and successful career, he has led engineering teams in Rolls-Royce, worked with DARPA on the first drone propulsion systems, and bought the second 3D printing system ever manufactured by Stratasys. But he is totally astonished by the capabilities of contemporary design software and additive manufacturing systems. “I think this is like the renaissance of engineering,” he mentions. Additive manufacturing became an important tool in the development of the microturbine generator.
A key component of KW Micro Power’s airborne microturbine is the generator housing. The engineers of KW Micro Power, nTopology, and VELO3D created a housing that is not only much lighter than the original design and manufacturable as one piece with minimal support structures but also features internal conformal channels for cooling the engine and preheating the fuel.