Towards the *fully* 3D-printed electric cars.

True, the big dumb cylindrical pressure vessel may not apply but, that's not the entire aircraft.

If the "mass were already gone from the design" then GE would not be pouring literally millions of dollars into developing a one meter cubed

3D printer presumably for printing aircraft engine parts.

Landing gear, and all other structural moving parts, is surely another area on aircraft which could use this technology. Landing gear make up a significant percentage of an aircraft's total dry mass, so this would be a likely candidate for shape optimization and 3D printing.

Yes, many times. I've got a b.s. in aerospace engineering, so I know the basics. Many of our customers are aerospace, so I have to understand the domain.

This is quite short sighted. I'm sure the same was said about composites when they were in their infancy. Today it would be quite hard (i.e. likely impossible) to point to something commercial that flies and carries people commercially that has absolutely zero composite content.

I can say that shape optimization coupled with 3D printing is one of the "bleeding edge" topics in my industry. It's really no secret, you can surely Google hundreds of articles on the topic. I really can't go into further details, but my profession is in writing engineering software, so I ought to know.

Jeff

--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.   
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,  
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

Anything but hype. The CFM Leap engine fuel nozzels are additive. GE is putting $400M into the turboprop for Cessna and many parts will be 3D. They say 3D is letting them consolidate 845 parts into just 11 components. Reduces overall complexity, inspection cost and maintaince cost. And they are predicting

20% less fuel burn.

Not just GE. Siemens is working on 3D gas turbine blades. From their Feb 2017 presser "Siemens has achieved a breakthrough by finishing its first full load engine tests for gas turbine blades completely produced using Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. The company successfully validated multiple AM printed turbine blades with a conventional blade design at full engine conditions. This means the components were tested at 13,000 revolutions per minute and temperatures beyond 1,250 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, Siemens tested a new blade design with a completely revised and improved internal cooling geometry manufactured using the AM technology."

Additive will probably never replace stamped or many formed or cast parts but you never know. Years ago a billion transistors on a wafer was pure fantasy.

--
Chisolm 
Republic of Texas

Nope, economics.

It takes a fraction of a second to stamp out a sheet metal automobile body part out of standard sheet metal stock.

I fail to understand why geeks think 3D printing is the ultimate answer to manufacturing when it is in fact slow and expensive.

--
Jim Pennino

Additive manufacturing can't take credit for the improved fuel efficiency. 15-20% is the target for the new generation of engines, like GTF.

One interesting thing about consolidating a lot of parts into one 3D printed part is that when anything wears out, you have to replace the whole thing.

3D printing *is* mostly hype. You're going to see a lot of 3D printers and fidget spinners and IoT-enabled lightbulbs at garage sales soon.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Again, you are talking about niche applications and landing gear are not that big a part of an aircrafts weight.

An irrelevant red herring to the subject of 3D printing. There are a HUGE number of different composite materials out there and it has taken well over half a century for most aircraft to have even a small fraction of composite materials in their construction.

Note the word "most".

Whoopee. It is still niche.

Does anyone care about a shape optimized 4 slice toaster or filing cabinet?

--
Jim Pennino

--

--

You are correct that metal 3D-printed parts by amateurs were only designed by them, but had to be actually printed by one of the large 3D-printing companies.

Still, that leaves open the possibility that a scale-model car could be designed by amateurs to be fully 3D-printed by one of the large companies.

The largest of the professional, metal 3D-printers common now can 3D-print parts about a foot across and cost about $250,000. So you can imagine a

3D-printer that can 3D-print parts, say, 10 feet across, would be 10^3 = 1,000 times larger in volume and mass, and perhaps a thousand times more expensive, to $250 million.

An expensive proposition. But if it can be shown a scale-model car can be fully 3D-printed then it might be worthwhile for a large industrial company to invest in this when it would mean any car of any model could be

3D-printed on demand.

Bob Clark

Sometimes you light-weight a part too far. Back in 1985, my mechanic called me in to look at a repair. The new brake disk was much heavier and much less "organic". But the original one warped because it didn't have enough mass to absorb the heat till it could be radiated away, and the manufacturer provided a much simpler but heavier replacement part.

The new part was so much different looking than the original one that he wanted my permission to proceed.

(As a 400 pound guy who likes to drive econobox microcars, I always seem to have alignment and brake problems only on the front left. Hmmm?)

--
We are geeks.  Resistance is voltage over current.

The Altair was obsolete in two years. The Apple ][ was obsolete in five, though genius level reworkings kept it going for what, 12? The context for that quote was the decision to build a computer with ten times the memory capacity of the normal business computer out there at the time, with the expectation that they would totally revamp the design in a few years. Remember that was the time when Microsoft bet big on Unix as the next big thing. Nobody expected to be finding ISA compatible computers running a compatible OS 35 years later.

--
We are geeks.  Resistance is voltage over current.

Today no. In 50 years I reckon they will, as shape optimised means a fraction of the material used.

NT

t

=

Goods don't usually go up in price proportionally to volume. And like anything in its infancy 3D printers are coming down in price rapid ly.

ny

Jay Leno already gets 3d printed car parts made for old machines with zero spares availability. Custom cars might become a lot more popular in future, who knows - if so 3d can do that. Whether it will ever compete with stampe d metal I've very little idea. We hear emotive arguments but nothing very s olid. At best we can say 3d printing is slow, whereas stamping & casting ar e heavy, wasteful, shape restricted and require way more assembly time.

NT

Rocketlab's entire combustion chamber is 3D printed, complete with detailed flow passages for cooling/fuel pre-heat. The specific channel geometry achieves significant performance advantages (weight reduction) and could not be manufactured using conventional methods.

Clifford Heath.

They have been in business for 11 years and haven't launched anything into orbit. So the technology is still speculative.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

There is one very successful additive manufacturing process: casting.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

They launched two weeks ago, and only narrowly missed orbit. The engines have had many successful stationary tests, the design seems pretty solid.

They're targeting a price and payload configuration that hasn't been done before, is all. On an NZ budget, not a NASA one.

You fail to understand so much, this is just one tiny thing among many.

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the 
 truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." 
                               -- Thomas Jefferson

It is slow and expensive, *at the moment*, but it won't always be; and one of the ways it will start to be rapid and cheap is by fabricating things which make other things.

So, for example, it will make moulds, and the machinery to use them, which will combine the advantages of bespoke design with the speed and low-cost of traditional manufacturing.

Similarly, it will fabricate machines which wind, for example, copper wire onto cast armatures.

Yes. I do.

If any significant number of items in your house are fabricated, it makes sense to use as few raw materials as possible, so, for example, it would make sense to honeycomb the inside of a knife handle, since it would still be strong enough, and would allow you to keep a gram or two of material "in the pot" for other projects.

Ditto everything you make.

From Wikipedia (because I don't have time to look up a "better" source):

The undercarriage is typically 4-5% of the takeoff mass and can even reach 7%.

That's significant in aerospace.

How is an example of the adoption of new materials/manufacturing processes not applicable to 3D printing which is another example of the same thing? Are you deliberately being intellectually dishonest?

You're posting to sci.space groups. It's quite significant to the aerospace industry. If you don't like it, find another group to pester.

This isn't sci.toaster.

Jeff

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All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.   
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,  
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

Yes, engineers and "bean counters" sometimes cut too far.

Jeff

--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.   
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,  
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.