[rbanffy]

> You need a paradigm shift (ie: iphone vs nokia) to make the change.

I imagine the manufacturing breakthrough for high temperature jet turbine blades could be additive manufacturing where you grow the crystalline structure layer by layer instead of casting and carefully nurturing it. Mature markets with few incumbents focus on local maxima and have difficulty to move from one maxima to another, while a new manufacturer can start from a different position and search for other maxima.

[pfdietz]

Directional solidification is a kind of additive manufacturing? You're carefully adding to macroscopic crystalline structure at a propagating melt/solid interface.

[rbanffy]

It kind of is, but it happens within the molten part, so it's harder to control (and, considering how hard, I'd say the science behind it is still poorly understood).

[datadrivenangel]

They get perfect enough single crystal superalloy blades every time ... after throwing out the half that fail. The science is well understood, even if it's fiendishly hard [0]

0 - https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/resourcefiles/aboutasm...