“Laddering up” of the range of tooling options requires assessing at each plateau whether greater upfront investment in tooling will pay off with a relatively quick return on investment. Since tooling plays such a key role in this equation, it also means working closely with OEMs willing to evaluate the best available tooling options at any time as production requirements increase.
Boeing collaborates with Assembrix to manage and protect intellectual property shared with vendors across its global supply chain for additive manufacturing.
Equispheres will use the investment to conduct the research and development needed to build reactors that will produce powders of higher-strength materials, such as steels, cobalt, chrome, and Inconel.
Together, the companies will develop customized lightweight material systems and advanced manufacturing processes, such as metal additive manufacturing – also known as 3D printing – to advance current and next-generation aerospace and defense solutions, including new structures and systems not currently in existence.
GKN Aerospace in Trollhättan, Sweden, are developing and manufacturing the first additive-manufactured, or 3D-printed, rocket engine turbines in Europe, officials say. The tier 1 aerospace supplier is harnessing cutting-edge additive manufacturing (AM) technology to produce two full-scale turbines for the Prometheus reusable rocket engine demonstrator on liquid oxygen and methane propellants, while reducing the number of parts from more than 100 to 2 and cutting costs by 90 percent.
Aerospace manufacturers walk a metaphorical balance beam to continually develop and produce stronger, more efficient materials and components, while addressing all potential failure modes. This is true for safety-critical aircraft components like landing gear systems. Fokker Landing Gear B.V./GKN Aerospace recently equipped its mechanical laboratory with three creep testing machines to verify its manufacturing process control of zinc-plated bolts for aircraft landing gear systems.
Weber Metals Inc., a division of Otto Fuchs KG of Germany, unveiled a new, $180 million, 60,000-ton press at its 2.5-acre facility in Paramount, California, southeast of Los Angeles. It sets a record as the highest tonnage hydraulic forging press in the Americas and the largest privately funded forging press investment in the world.
NASA’s Space Technology and Mission Directorate awarded Frontier Aerospace with “Tipping Point” funding to qualify Frontier’s Deep Space Engine (DSE) for flight. The compact and lightweight design of the 100-pound force DSE thruster will enable future development of smaller and less expensive spacecraft propulsion systems due to the lower temperature freezing characteristics of its particular propellant.
ARCONIC-THOR –designed for higher temperature applications in next generation aero engines and adjacent structures. The ARCONIC-THOR alooy is nearly 50 percent lighter than incumbent nickel-based superalloys.
To enable the tests required for development work to be performed with maximum efficiency, the Zwick Roell Group (ZwickRoell) – a global supplier of materials testing machines based out of Ulm, Germany – developed a materials testing machine that can be equipped with both a temperature chamber and a high-temperature furnace.
The search for a suitable replacement to hard chrome plating on aerospace components has been a key supply chain priority for aircraft manufacturers. This is because of the documented health risks to workers and the impact on the environment from exposure to hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen that occurs during the chrome plating process and the most toxic form of chromium.
Sciaky, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Phillips Service Industries, Inc. (PSI), will contribute its novel Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing (EBAM) wire-fed metal 3D printing technology to a new traditional/additive hybrid process to manufacturing titanium alloy aircraft components.
Battery weight and power density is a major design consideration when it comes to electric and hybrid-electric vehicles. To reduce platform weight for next-generation electric vehicles, Atlanta-based Novelis, Inc. (Novelis) has used direct feedback from industry partners and automotive design engineers to develop the first aluminum sheet battery enclosure.
At the convergence of 3D-printing and lithium battery technology, Hong Kong researchers develop a promising textile-based, foldable battery that may find its way onto IoT-connected fabrics within automotive, aerospace, and medical industries.
According to the presentation, the cargo variant of the Blue Moon lander can carry 3.6 metric tons to the lunar surface. Another lander variant could potentially stretch to be capable of carrying a 6.5-metric-ton, human-rated ascent stage.
Maintainers from the U.S. Air Force 574th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron (AMXS) have installed the first titanium additively manufactured titanium component on an operational Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.
Four of these technologies – smart coatings for corrosion detection and protection, aluminum alloys for high temperature applications, particle contamination mitigation technologies, and thermal and environmental barrier coating systems – are among NASA’s most in-demand technologies and have been applied to mainstream engineering projects.
EOS StainlessSteel CX, EOS Aluminium AlF357, EOS Titanium Ti64 Grade 5, and EOS Titanium Ti64 Grade 23 have been tailored to suit a broad array of applications, ranging from automotive, medical, and aerospace applications.
Two new installments in the burgeoning SAE International Podcast Series cast a spotlight on additive manufacturing, which is fueling innovation, greater efficiencies, and the future of mobility engineering. Additive manufacturing continues to advance and transform mobility engineering, as aerospace and automotive firms increasingly adopt and invest in 3D printing technologies, which are becoming more capable and cost-effective.