3D Printed aircraft flies
The key with 3d printing for manufacturing aircraft components (particularly titanium) is the low level of material wastage involved compared to conventional production. There was an article on the 787 recently in a major news outlet and Boeing's stated prime aim was to reduce the percentage of loss, which is currently mind-bending, given the huge cost of the raw material!
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Radix, I agree. For anyone in the Manchester UK area, the museum of science and industry has one that you can watch in action producing the most complex and intricate shapes. Nor is it theoretical; Tornados are flying around now with printed components.
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While I understand the concept, I do wonder how they get the layers to merge together into one solid billet for want of a better word. Especially when some billets have the metal grain flowing in the same direction for strength.
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Nutloose - apparently the grain can be controlled during additive manufacture - I have more homework to do, but am intrigued.
If the future is to include a supply chain amended by a remote server containing required parts drawings, with local manufacture of parts,potentially deployable manufacture of parts, I am really interested to know how the quality side works: what is the percentage failure rate of the manufacturing process, how do you qualify you remotely manufactured part - is control of the raw material, atmospheric conditions around the plant etc all going to require controls, or can it be made carefree to tight tolerances?
Alternatively, can certain parts be made with a more tolerant design to permit e.g. deployable manufacture world-wide? Interesting times.
If the future is to include a supply chain amended by a remote server containing required parts drawings, with local manufacture of parts,potentially deployable manufacture of parts, I am really interested to know how the quality side works: what is the percentage failure rate of the manufacturing process, how do you qualify you remotely manufactured part - is control of the raw material, atmospheric conditions around the plant etc all going to require controls, or can it be made carefree to tight tolerances?
Alternatively, can certain parts be made with a more tolerant design to permit e.g. deployable manufacture world-wide? Interesting times.
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The 3D printers that print themselves: how RepRap will change the world | TechRadar
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Nutloose - apparently the grain can be controlled during additive manufacture - I have more homework to do, but am intrigued.
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I think 3D printing has a lot of hype around it just because the "smell" of all the news articles is sort of the same as the thing I'm used to reading in the software world. It's all positive and without qualifications. To feel confident about something one needs to know what it cannot do as well as what it can and if you're not being told the negatives then it's just a sales pitch.
It sort of is amazing and yet relies on everyone mostly knowing nothing about machining and engineering so that we imagine it can make anything we might want. You can see us poor consumer lemmings rushing off to buy home 3d printers so as to be "a part of the future" and thereby paying for the huge R&D required to make things that might truly be worth the money. Without that kind of subsidy I doubt that there would be supercomputers in Los Alamos of 1/1000th the standard they have now - because us consumers paid for the R&D on the thousands of CPUs they use.
It's not that it isn't useful already or that it's won't develop a lot but I suggest that a goodly percentage of what is said about it is bull****.and that one should be asking what the limits are. e.g it's not going to make single-crystal turbine blades I presume although it might make the moulds. Without this information people are going to make silly and expensive investments and be conned,
It sort of is amazing and yet relies on everyone mostly knowing nothing about machining and engineering so that we imagine it can make anything we might want. You can see us poor consumer lemmings rushing off to buy home 3d printers so as to be "a part of the future" and thereby paying for the huge R&D required to make things that might truly be worth the money. Without that kind of subsidy I doubt that there would be supercomputers in Los Alamos of 1/1000th the standard they have now - because us consumers paid for the R&D on the thousands of CPUs they use.
It's not that it isn't useful already or that it's won't develop a lot but I suggest that a goodly percentage of what is said about it is bull****.and that one should be asking what the limits are. e.g it's not going to make single-crystal turbine blades I presume although it might make the moulds. Without this information people are going to make silly and expensive investments and be conned,
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Quote from Lyneham Lad...
"A looong while ago I was tasked with writing the draft structural servicing schedule for the Tornado. Apart from many meetings at Warton and MoD MB, I was despatched to Turin to see how the wing planks were produced at the Aeritalia factory. Large billets of aluminium were fed into CNC machines where >85% was machined away to form the top and bottom wing planks. Huge hoppers were situated underneath the CNC stations to take the swarf away for recycling."
Even longer ago I saw the production of the BAC 1-111. The wing skins were made in just that way, too...starting with large billets of aluminium alloy and machined away to form the structure, then they were shot peened until the required curve was obtained. Again, all the swarf was recycled. I can see how 3D printing is attractive as an alternative, but I do wonder about the quality control of such methods.
"A looong while ago I was tasked with writing the draft structural servicing schedule for the Tornado. Apart from many meetings at Warton and MoD MB, I was despatched to Turin to see how the wing planks were produced at the Aeritalia factory. Large billets of aluminium were fed into CNC machines where >85% was machined away to form the top and bottom wing planks. Huge hoppers were situated underneath the CNC stations to take the swarf away for recycling."
Even longer ago I saw the production of the BAC 1-111. The wing skins were made in just that way, too...starting with large billets of aluminium alloy and machined away to form the structure, then they were shot peened until the required curve was obtained. Again, all the swarf was recycled. I can see how 3D printing is attractive as an alternative, but I do wonder about the quality control of such methods.
Even longer ago I saw the production of the BAC 1-111. The wing skins were made in just that way, too...starting with large billets of aluminium alloy and machined away to form the structure, then they were shot peened until the required curve was obtained.
