How 3D Metal Printers Are Transforming Aerospace Engineering?

3D printing in metal is transforming aerospace engineering by increasing design options, reducing manufacturing costs, and delivering higher performance. It can also produce spare parts on demand, which can reduce inventory levels and costs.

Aerospace engineers can design components with exotic alloys to improve function and add strength where needed while lowering weight. The result is lighter, more efficient aircraft.

Low-Cost Rapid Tooling

The aerospace industry is a massive one, with numerous departments responsible for the design, manufacturing, operation, and maintenance of planes and spacecraft. These departments must balance cost with performance and risk when selecting the most appropriate production methods. 3D printing offers a highly effective solution that eliminates the need for expensive, labor-intensive processes such as metal casting or 5-axis CNC machining. By enabling the rapid production of end-use parts, 3D printing reduces the total cost of ownership and limits warehouse inventory requirements.

Aerospace companies are also increasingly using 3D printing to replace the need for traditional, heavy, costly components. For instance, Optisys used DMLS/SLM to produce a part that consolidated several separate components into a single structural component, saving over 60% in weight. Additionally, the company reduced the number of welded joints from four to two by making use of an internal lattice structure, further lowering the overall cost of the assembly.

High-Quality Prototypes

Aerospace manufacturing companies are constantly looking for ways to reduce the weight of their aircraft components. This has a direct impact on payload, fuel consumption, emissions, and even speed. When you can print a metal part with the same strength as machined parts, that means less material in the air and a lighter overall aircraft. This is why so many aerospace engineers are using 3D printing to build their prototypes instead of traditional methods like injection molding or CNC machining.

In addition to the cost savings, 3D printing also provides the opportunity to test components in an environment that they would never be able to create through conventional methods. This way, if a part is going to fail or work as intended in an actual airplane, it can be fixed before the final version of the component is built. That saves time, money, and a lot of headaches for the entire project.

Whether you’re printing complex metal parts for aerospace projects or simply need to create a prototype, 3D metal printers can deliver better quality than any other manufacturing method. Unlike other types of manufacturing, which require cutting away material to form the desired part, metal additive manufacturing builds the part layer by layer, which results in parts that are up to 60% lighter than their machined counterparts. This is especially true when you choose to use the Stratasys FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) process, which allows for intricate shapes and streamlined designs to cut down on wasted space.

Lightweight Assemblies

A critical issue faced by the aerospace industry is ensuring a sufficient supply of spare parts over an aircraft’s 30-year operating life. This is a major challenge that can be overcome through the use of metal 3D printing, which produces parts that are functional and durable enough to meet aerospace requirements. A Danish company called Satair has already used a metal 3D printer to produce a replacement part for an Airbus airliner, becoming the first provider of a certified spare part to fly on commercial passenger flights.

As well as offering a fast and cost-effective means of producing replacement parts, aerospace 3D printing allows companies to design and manufacture lighter parts that are fit for purpose, saving time, money, and weight. This also helps companies optimize inventory levels and eliminates the need for expensive storage facilities.

Aerospace engineers can also achieve lighter parts through the use of the cellular structure produced by most metal 3D printing technologies, such as Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Multi-Jet Fusion (MJF), and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). This technique creates a strong yet lightweight honeycomb structure that gives the part added resilience without adding weight.

Compared to traditional manufacturing methods, metal 3D printing is also much less wasteful as the material is consumed only where needed, resulting in reduced scrap rates. This is particularly beneficial in the aerospace sector as the weight of parts is a key consideration when designing aircraft.

High-Performance Components

Increasingly, manufacturers are exploring ways to boost aircraft performance and energy efficiency by consolidating many components into a single, more efficient part. 3D metal printing can produce these consolidated parts faster and cheaper than conventional manufacturing methods, and it cuts the weight of the part by eliminating excess materials.

Metal 3D printing can produce aerospace components with intricate geometries, internal lattice structures, conformal cooling channels and other features that cannot be made with traditional machining methods. These printed components offer greater design flexibility and allow engineers to create more efficient aircraft.

This type of 3D printing enables the production of metal parts with a very smooth surface finish that requires little or no post-processing. This can help reduce assembly costs and shortens production times. This makes it especially appealing to original equipment manufacturers who want to produce complex, lightweight parts quickly and at a relatively low cost.

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