3 D Printing and Our Environment
Karie M. Brown
Brown Mackie College
3 D Printing
3-D printing has come to the aircraft industry. Eric Masanet is leading a team to use 3-D printing for making aircraft parts. The team believes the lighter and high-performance parts could significantly reduce waste and also make the airplanes lighter.
While critical areas of the aircraft aren’t anticipated to be replaced anytime soon. Less critical parts such as brackets and hinges can be replaced with 3-D printing. Traditional methods of production of components are inefficient and wasteful. 3-D printing requires far less raw material inputs and can further produce parts that minimize weight through better design. "We have suboptimal designs because conventional manufacturing limits us," Masanet said.
"There are enough parts that, when replaced, could reduce the weight of the aircraft by 4 to 7 percent," Masanet said. "And it could be even more as we move forward. This will save a lot of resources and a lot of fuel." Masanet predicted it would greatly benefit the environment in more than one way. His team estimated that airplane fuel consumption could be reduced by as much as 6.4 percent, reducing both fossil fuel dependency and greenhouse gas emissions. Manufacturers would also potentially save thousands of tons of aluminum, titanium, and nickel that are otherwise scrapped every year.
Masanet says that 3-D printing needs to improve a great deal before the full extent of the estimated aircraft weight savings. Currently, with limitations in the process of 3-D printing improvements would need to be made with surface quality, residual stresses, and repeatability, and throughput as these are barriers to full-scale adoption. (Northwestern University, 2015)
References
Northwestern University. (2015, June 2). Saving money and the environment with 3-D printing.