Slashdot Mirror
3D Printed Airliner Parts Face Regulatory Headwinds (wsj.com)
Some aerospace suppliers are eager to start using 3-D printing technology to turn out large, high-volume structural parts for jetliners, but U.S. safety regulators are taking a go-slow approach toward approving such production. From a report: Three-dimensional printing is a darling of the aerospace industry because it is relatively inexpensive compared with more-prevalent ways of making components. A series of announcements at the Paris Air Show expected in coming days illustrates the immense promise of airliner parts manufactured by 3-D printers -- as well as the formidable regulatory challenges confronting their widespread acceptance (alternative source). On Tuesday, officials of Norsk Titanium AS, a closely held Norwegian company that has developed a novel 3-D printing approach, will unveil a broad partnership with Spirit AeroSystems, a major subcontractor for Boeing and other industry players. Under the arrangement, Spirit sees the potential of eventually using Norsk's technology to produce thousands of different parts at 30% lower cost than traditional milling methods. However, before that can happen, the Federal Aviation Administration has to approve the overall process and certify that the cutting-edge, plasma-deposition technology is reliable enough to ensure identical strength and other properties from batch to batch. FAA officials have said they are moving cautiously, because they want to fully understand the unique technical issues.
This is one area where you REALLY want to make sure you get it right.
I suppose when CNC came on the scene in the 1950s and 1960s
https://youtu.be/_1g1b_EeVHw?t=355
that this also was met with the correct conservative approach.
The military have unlimited resources and don't need to go along with civilian requirements, which is why military stuff is always among the first users of technology.
But I'm pretty happy if engineers want to look at every corner and edge case before I ease my lily-white civilian ass into an airliner with a 3D printed floor.
I have zero interest in flying in an airplane using parts that have the least bit to do with the aerodynamics or structural integrity of the airplane that are rushed to market simply because they're using a Cool New Process that coincidentally happens to be cheaper.
Determining the safety of the plasma-deposition technology shouldn't take more than six months of carefully designed testing and comparison between 3-D Printed parts and forged/machines parts.
But, the FAA will insist on writing a book for every step in the manufacturing of the 3-D printed device itself, then another book on every step of the 3-D printing process, then yet another book on the testing of EACH 3-D Printed part, a completely separate tracking system, etc. etc.
If the FAA was in charge of naming newborns, no one would have names until they were 12 twelve.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's easier to ask forgiveness then to ask permission
I don't believe either of these articles do a great job at providing the facts we need. Obviously structural integrity is a major concern here, but where is the information on the testing? In a scarier question, has any testing been done? We have two sides of this issue. One is the industry properly testing and validating that these parts of safe and effective to use. The other is regulation and is it going to lag behind. If proper testing is done and regulation keeps this from coming to the market then we are in a bit of a fear mongering mode by articles like these. Please do not take this post for any sort of affirmation of my like or dislike of the airline industry . You will never see me on a place under my own free will any time soon, with or without 3d printer parts.
Sent from my TARDIS
Casting and milling are well understood. They have been used since the age of steam. Identifying defects in traditionally machined parts works so well that aircraft rarely have problems related to the manufacture of metal parts.
In a 3D printed part every one of the thousands of layers is a potential failure point. To date there is no reliable way to find a single weld failure in all those thousands of layers. Once 3D printed parts have a decade of successful use in cars then will be the time to use them in aircraft.
That fell off...
Everyone likes boobies.
Link?
Stop calling it 3d-printing. This is just a variation of sintering techniques that have been used for decades in the aerospace industry. While this particular method of laser sintering may be novel and require the FAA to study it before approving, sintering is a well understood metallurgical process. Given the high heat required for the process, no one is going to be home printing machine parts in their basement any time soon.
'Whoa! Maybe we shouldn't have printed that replacement rudder in PLA!'
That Plasma Deposition and Laser Sintering hava BOTH been previously proven to produce parts up to 3x physically stronger then their standard manufacturing method counterparts, Can be made ALL ONE PIECE (even with some moving internal parts), and have so far been stress tested to provide up to 10x the standard service life of the same old-school manufactured part, This might be a bit of bureaucracy.... IMO There is "Testing" and there us using RED-TAPE to stifle innovation. Guess which one this is?
Just imagine if each airport had their own 3D printer so that, whenever a plane had a mechanical problem and needed a replacement part, it could simply be fabricated on the spot instead of waiting countless hours for it to be flown in from who-knows-where! This would be incredible. While of course attention to safety is warranted, we seriously need to speed up these efforts.
http://www.afsinc.org/multimedia/contentMCDP.cfm?ItemNumber=19919
Autodesk originally started developing its generative design software for 3-D printing of direct-to-metal parts. But metal printing is constrained by size, and the team began considering how to use the model for other manufacturing methods. Metalcasting was a natural choice because additive technology can be used to make the patterns and tooling.
Zelda?
Were they walking behind creimer after lunch?
Oddly enough, nobody has pointed out that the FAA already has experience certifying 3D printed parts for flight, and in a flight regime far more rigorous than aircraft. SpaceX has already flown Falcon 9s with 3D printed engine parts, with the FAA's knowledge and approval.
If the FAA's rocket division would just talk to the aircraft division, the certifying process might go a little faster.
Planes prefer taking off into the wind anyway, don't they?
I thought they did random checks, x-rays, stress tests and such already on standard produced metal components intended for aerospace usage. Just run these printed components through the same/more stringent checks and see how they compare? From my limited understanding it's not difficult to assess a components characteristics in lab testing, even aging can be simulated to a certain degree of accuracy.
Having said that, the very same certification and process would become a very important factor in 3D printing dominating aircraft/nuclear engineer parts and components.
These ares nuclear power stations and aircraft are one of the most heavily regulated for safety and compliance. 3D printing can implant sensors and failure detectors deep inside the structures during manufacturing. Strain gauges, crack/fracture detecting strips can be placed and rest of the component "poured" around it. Once this technology matures, FAA might demand failure detectors to be embedded inside all critical components. Traditional manufacturing like casting, forging, drawing, rolling, machining, turning, milling and welding can not do this, or do this efficiently. When that switch happens, 3D printing will be the only way to make the critical components for aircraft and nuclear reactors. It will be pure gravy after that for 3D printers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes, it is time consuming, but it has ALREADY BEEN DONE. These parts have been thoroughly tested, have already been used in military aircraft, and have a good track record.
Military aircraft are maintained differently than civilian aircraft. They are also designed and utilized differently. Milspec is not the end-all-be-all standard of quality many imagine it to be.
You are implying that the FAA is saying "We would like you to do more testing of X, Y, and Z for issues A, B and C", when what they are actually saying is "I am retiring in two years, and I don't want to make any decision that might jeopardize my pension."
And your evidence for this is what exactly? Do you have anything besides run of the mill cynicism to back up your claim? And exactly how do you figure that any decision by an FAA official would in any way endanger their pension?
FAA officials have said they are moving cautiously, because they want to fully understand the unique technical issues.
But they let Boeing put a garbage battery system on the 787 because .... Boeing is the authority. And they can be trusted to self certify.
This 'go slow' approach may in fact have been in response to the battery SNAFU (and a few other things). But that just goes to show how the regulatory pendulum swings back and forth. In a few years, Boeing will lean on the regulators and kite string and chewing gum will pass muster. If Boeing says so.
Have gnu, will travel.
After using industrial CT to review hundreds of "printed" Ti parts, the prior above comment regarding differentials from batch to batch could not be more correct. The issue is caused by a lack of control over the purity of the powder material. All it takes is are a couple of tiny impure grains, which result in a 'pop corn' effect during the processing. Each layer is not visible or inspected, so the defect becomes encased by surrounding melted material and the resulting void is now invisible. If each part is CT scanned, and qualified showing no porosity in critical structural areas, this may be satisfactory for non structural parts. The downside is CT inspection is time consuming (10-15 min per part); the upside is a diminished skilled worker demand. At a recent symposium showcasing all the major 3D metal print firms along with the major aerospace fabricators, curiously there were NO Quality or CT firms invited or exhibiting. Not being a conspiracy theorist, but it does make one want to say hmmmm. We now can conduct virtual structural analyses on the actual geometry of the printed metal part, defects and all, using the CT voxel based dataset. Doing porosity analyses is completely automated as well on the same dataset. This is a young industry. Save your $$ fabricating non structural parts til the process track record and material control is proven to be magnitudes greater than I have seen so far for mission critical parts. Printed metal biological replacement parts such as hip sockets, joints, knees, and spinal parts are ideal for this young industry in that the force loading is quite a bit less, and can tolerate porosity; wing spar supports, turbine blades, engine mounts, NFW.
"Norsk" literally means "Norwegian" in Norwegian, so calling the company "Norsk" is just like calling "USA Today" just "USA".
There are literally hundreds (if not thousands?) of companies named "Norsk ", I used to work for Norsk Hydro which is by far the largest example of the type. Even though the DNS name was hydro.com, lots and lots of English articles insisted on calling the company "Norsk".(It got started as "The Norwegian Hydro-Electric Fertilizer Company" (literal translation of the original name) over 100 years ago.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
there are already technologies that produce stronger parts at much higher speeds. multi axis milling machines and other removal type techniques are how even the production parts are often made. Load the file, lock in the casting (or billet block), calibrate and let 'er rip.
Additive 3D systems are slower and tend to produce parts of inferior strength and work best for prototyping and in cases of very expensive systems, one offs where actual parts are simply not obtainable because production options do not exist and the risk of a part failure is "safer" than not having the part at all.
NO civilian airline company is in any situation where "this weaker piece might hold" is acceptable over "grounding the aircraft until the manufacturer's ACOG team arrives with the proper part". There's no "we're stuck in the field with a laser sintering machine so we'll use that to replace this jackscrew" or "we really need this composite engine cover somewhere in the Midwest where we happen to have a 3D printer at the airfield". Any place where they could additively manufacture anything, is anywhere they need to offline the aircraft.