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Researchers Create World's First 3D-Printed Jet Engines
Zothecula writes: Working with colleagues from Deakin University and CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization), researchers from Australia's Monash University have created the world's first 3D-printed jet engine. While they were at it, they created the world's second one, too. One of them is currently on display at the International Air Show in Avalon, Australia, while the other can be seen at the headquarters of French aerospace company Microturbo, in Toulouse.
No word on whether the thing was ever powered up, or is simply a neat toy.
Has it produced so much as a millinewton of thrust? A single rotation of the compressor? Been heated to a degree above room temperature?
"According to Wu, the next step will be to fine-tune the finish of the components, with testing of a 3D-printed engine expected to take place within a couple of years."
Clickbaity hype like this doesn't just waste my time, it tends to cause apathy and skepticism of science and engineering in the populace at large. Stop it.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It is just a display model, but this is actually one of the applications of 3D printing worth getting excited about.
Jet engines are a good candidate because they are low volume, high margin, and the current designs are compromised somewhat by the existing manufacturing technologies available. The ability to make more complex aerodynamic forms, create single parts with variations in material composition throughout, and the potential to speed up development and testing of different designs is huge for this industry.
However there are still a lot of issues to work through, and I’m not sure how they are ever going to produce a sintered turbine blade that can perform as well as an existing one. I would imagine much of their research is going into this area but these are tough problems to solve.
fuck you Slashdot for autoplay video ads with sound on your front page
If they can create the parts that fast, why don't they just power it up, see which parts fail, and improve those, rather than trying to improve it before testing? After all, they can reprint broken/worn parts (and probably reassemble) within a 2-3 week period.
Granted, I know the grad students and postdocs need to write their papers, and I know sintered metal isn't always as strong as parts made via other methods, but two years seems a bit long for the fire-up process.
That is all.
Methinks that as 3D printing becomes more reliable and cheaper then the production of a lot of heavy industry goods will be taken back to Europe and North America. In fact, even the small and cheap items of everyday life will be produced at home.
Yes, it's made from metal, which is very cool! But aircraft components undergo rigorous inspection looking for cracks, defects, etc in the structure of the metal itself. Will this 3D-printed metal meet those standards?
Here's a video of Elon Musk printing titanium engine components way back in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Isn't the process used laser metal sintering? There's no need to use trendy buzzwords ("3-d printing") that give the false impression that this is a new technique that a hobbyist could do in his basement, when really this is just a variation of a well established industrial process, that requires large industrial tooling.
They want me to trust my life to this thing!
as in 10,000 hours between minors, and 50,000 hours between major rebuilds.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This is a really good way to create a jet engine that flies apart without warning. 3D printed metals will never have the structural integrity of cast metals.
GE aviation did this a while ago, and theirs ran.
Another stupid 3D printing story....
Great, now we'll have to pay each time we see an airplane.
Eat shit, patent trolls.
A set of models for a working jet engine was posted to Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:114468) on July 7, 2913. It includes video. A second set of models for a working Low Bypass Turbofan Jet Engine was published by gahwar a few months later (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:150694).
Wut's all this, then?