Starting with a single exterior hatch on the jet, the company is confident that rapidly produced spare parts will eventually be able to allow battle damage to be temporarily fixed while these aircraft are deployed at remote locations, ensuring a high operational tempo can be maintained.
Saab announced today that it has already completed a first test flight with a 3D-printed replacement exterior part. The trial at the company’s Linköping airfield on March 19 involved a two-seat Saab JAS 39D Gripen fighter with a replacement hatch fitted on the rear fuselage. Made of a nylon polymer called PA2200, the part was furnished using “additive manufacturing” — better known as 3D printing.
A small start to a potentially big development.
Gripen in action.
Install the printer IN the plane then it can repair itself on the go.
ReplyDeleteThe pilot gonna crawl out on a wing at MACH-1 to Gorilla glue the patch on?
DeleteIt's starts repairing itself, then becomes self aware, then we are in trouble.
DeleteNo, that's the job of the R2D2 unit.
DeleteDon’t know how long 3D printing takes, but that panel wouldn’t be hard to make. Where this process has advantages is in structural members: ribs, formers, stringers, etc. If they can print them strong enough to handle flight loads, that alone will save 24+ hours of heat treating aluminum.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best uses of 3D printing in Aerospace is for the creation of complex investment casting cores from 3D models. We used to call it stereolithography but I guess nobody likes big words.
ReplyDeleteThat was the term used for building computer chips on wafers. Probably only pertinent to multiple layers of deposition. I think they were only up to ~9 layers when I left that industry, using visible wavelength. Line geometry is probably well past being able to use such large wavelengths. I think they were down to 1 micron line width then.
DeleteIn 1995 Nicholas Negroponte at MIT's Media Lab wrote Being Digital in which he stated "ship electrons, not atoms." IIRC, about the same time DARPA was looking at sending electronic plans and specs to remote locations to make (as in"machining") parts for military systems rather than maintaining the Pentagon's massive repair parts srocking and distribution infrastructure. It looks like in a few years we'll actually be where Negroponte envisioned.
ReplyDelete