Courtesy Airliners
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Next: the whole plane
Rapid prototyping, or 3-D printing, has been used to create all kinds of amazing objects in a variety of media, but a team working under EADS in the UK wants to print something heretofore unheard of: the entire wing of an airliner. Working at the same facility where Concordes were once built, researchers there are already printing landing gear brackets and other aircraft components in hopes that one day they’ll be able to print out many of the critical parts for an entire aircraft.
This is chiefly due to developments that allow modern 3-D printers to turn out finished objects in media ranging from the high-grade titanium alloys necessary for aircraft construction to glass, plastics, concrete, and even frosting.
It’s also within the realm of possibility that the company could build an entire aircraft–piece by piece–in one place, sidestepping some of the supply-chain problems that have delayed the Airbus A380.
Experts in the field now say 20 percent of the output of the world’s 3-D printers is final products, and that’s expected to rise to 50 percent by 2020. In other words, people are prototyping and manufacturing on the same machines.
If you could print an airline wing that can stand up to wind-tunnel tests, you could print just about anything. 3-D printing lowers the cost of entry into manufacturing for any number of enterprises.
If EADS is already printing aircraft components, the automakers are likely to get on board. New for 2035, the printed Corvette.
To be technical, it would be Microbots using Nanoscale technology.
No doubt they will be sued by Apple, Microsoft or some other Death Star corporation for pirating some obscure patent which was never used but which they have the usual death grip on.
I’m frightened to even breath these days because of the certainty that some huge corporate in the US has not issued me a licence.
I understand that India has to pay millions every year to some US corporation for the right to use (medically) some spice compound which was in use before America was even discovered.
Land of the free?
# 22 Norman Speight said, “I understand that India has to pay millions every year to some US corporation for the right to use (medically) some spice compound”
I understand your frustration and I get the point. But, I’m driven to ask you to document this claim. India does not necessarily care about patent claims on medicines. They are probably the world’s leader in selling knockoffs of expensive patented medicines. I can’t see them paying through the nose for a mixture of spices…
I thought they were working on a kidney for me.
#19 – it could be the exact opposite. The tooling for a pressed Al part (never mind Ti) is so huge that you can’t make prototypes. You design it on a computer with FEA, make it, fly it – and redesign it if there is a crash!
With this rapid prototyping you could make a test piece of a vital part and put real hours into it on a test flight or a testing rig and then discover the flaws
#22 – yes tumeric, although Sanskrit doctors were writing about it’s use 2000 years before America was discovered they forgot to register it with the FDA.
But nobody actually pays – it got laughed out of court. However the counter suit for the western use of the Hindu numerals ’0-9′ might be a bit more difficult to get around. It’s going to be difficult to do binary without zero!
# 26 Nobody said, “However the counter suit for the western use of the Hindu numerals ’0-9′ might be a bit more difficult to get around.”
I heard they forgot to renew the patent.
As for turmeric – well, it’s not a bad topical antiseptic and does have some anti-inflammatory properties but the natural healing mavens give it almost magical attributes – fights cancer, cures depression, etc. Pretty much all bunk and hokum. I remember a herbalist once told me it detoxifies the liver. I’ve never met a toxic liver. In fact, most of them spend their entire careers detoxifying the blood and then getting rid of those toxins by themselves.
But, you’re right. There is no patent on turmeric and, if it ever did go to court, I believe it would be laughed out.
# 24 EnemyOfTheState said, “I thought they were working on a kidney for me.” If you need one, good luck. In fact, there is a biological printer and they are in the very early stages of being able to “print” new organs. I doubt I’LL ever see one ready for implantation but they are working on it.
If the ink for the “wing printer” is priced at the same rate as regular HP ink, then a wing will cost $6 trillion (est.) to print.
And say hello to less jobs.
The end product is cheaper, no doubt, but will there be enough people still having jobs at the end?
Print a human? So how many of you will be printing your next girl friend or boy friend?
Where do you use frosting on an airplane?
What happens if they print the left wing in Times New Roman and the right wing in Comic Sans?
in #31, deowll said: So how many of you will be printing your next girl friend or boy friend?
Already been done.
Look at the sheets and, uh, specialty pillows you can buy in Akihabara or from J-list.
This is actually the prototype for the “Star Trek replicator”. First printing, next atomic/molecular manipulations!
I don’t know if they noticed, but you need TWO WINGS TO FLY !!! And that AirBus 381 is an invitation to terrorists to KILL PEOPLE IN VERY LARGE NUMBERS !!!