Jul.12, 2012
Parmy Olson of Forbes.com reported that Airbus has been working on a concept plane built with a 3D printer. The photo below is the concept plane to be made circa 2050.
This scale of object is much bigger than any 3D printer can make today. According to Parmy Olson,
Bastian Schafer, a cabin designer with Airbus, has been working for the last two years on a concept plane that would be built from the ground up with a 3D printer that's very large in deed, ie. as big as an aircraft hanger.
Schafer's design comes with a roadmap, from 3D-printing small components now, through to the plane as a whole around 2050.
Why use 3D printing at all? Airbus parent EADS has been looking into using the process, known as additive layer manufacturing, for making aircraft for some time because it's potentially cheaper, and can result in components that are 65% ligher than with traditional manufacturing methods. Schafer's concept plane is also so dizzyingly complicated that it requires radical manufacturing methods: from the curved fuselage to the bionic structure, to the transparent skin that gives passengers a panoramic view of the sky and clouds around them.
"It would have to be about 80 by 80 meters," said Schafer of the eventual, yet-to-be-created 3D printer. "This could be feasible."
In 2010 Schafer and 10 other industrial designers started brainstorming and came up with the current, 3D printed concept design.
"Now we'd like to create even bigger parts in the mid-term up to 2013," said Schafer. "Printed components of a seat or other structural components inside the cabin, and we have 20 years to scale this up."
However this Airbus concept plane's bionic structure requires materials that aren't available yet, such as strong-yet-transparent aluminum for the fuselage, certain biopolymers and other materials strengthened by carbon nano tubes. So designing and producing right materials is still a challenge for the team.
Meanwhile, Airbus has already used 3D-printed parts to help fly the massive A380. Using 3D printing, Airbus has created intricate forms out of high-grade metal and these 3D-printed parts are stronger and lighter than what we made with traditional manufacturing processes.
New models of Airbus' Eurofighter Typhoon, a military jet, already contain non-structural parts of its air-conditioning unit that have been 3D printed, Schafer said.
Source: Forbes
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
Maybe you also like:
- EADS displays 3D-printed unmanned aerial vehicle at Farnborough Airshow
- North America's largest 3D print on its way to Vancouver
- Chinese scientists uses 3D printer to print ear
- Stratasys 3D printer supports student built Lunar Rover Prototype for Google Lunar X PRIZE
- Dutch designer Ineke Otte and her 3D printed jewelry
- First 3D printed robot legs move more like human
- Inspiring Exoskeleton 3D-printed shoes
- 3D printed saxophone mouthpiece shown at North Sea Jazz 2012
- 3D printed Golf-In-Miniature: The desktop 18 hole miniature golf course
- Recreating dinosaurs with 3D scanner and 3D printer
- Penn Researchers create vasculature in living tissues with RepRap 3D printer and sugar
- Memoirs - 3D printed USB jewellery
- Lightest sprint shoe "Designed to Win" created with 3D printer
- Build customized portable speaker with a 3D printer
- Making Boxes for Gadgets with a 3D printer
- Customize and 3D print your own MWOO
- Microsoft Surface tablet designed in a bunker using 3D printers
- 3D printed Soundscape brings the warmth and tactility back into music
- Peg lamp and chair created using traditional crafts and 3D printing
- New Atom 3D printed electric guitar has a more metallic sound
3Ders.org provides the latest news about 3D printing technology and 3D printers. We are now seven years old and have around 1.5 million unique visitors per month.
