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Why Is The Aircraft Industry Using 3D Printing?

While as of the time of writing, the air
travel industry is facing significant difficulties in the face of
pandemic-driven reductions in flights, for many years aircraft have been
proving one of the fastest-growing applications for 3D printing around the world.
We expect that air travel will resume in the not-too-distant future — and that
will see demand for state-of-the-art aircraft on the rise. Some manufacturers
may even be using this unanticipated downtime to revamp their fleets, building
up digital inventories to supply aging aircraft and using advanced
manufacturing technologies to create the next generations of aircraft.

Let’s dive in to find out just why the
aircraft industry is using 3D printing.

A Fit
For 3D Printing

Aerospace is a unique fit for many of the
most-touted benefits of 3D printing:

  • Part consolidation
  • Lightweighting
  • Complex geometries (“freedom of design”)
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Low-volume production
  • Digital inventory

Let’s look at each of these areas to see how
the production of aircraft can make use of these benefits.

Part
Consolidation

The weakest point in an assembly is where it
has been, well, assembled. When it comes to aircraft, such a weakness could
become a point of critical failure, endangering human lives.

By consolidating multiple components of a part
into a single 3D printed build, the number of assembly points is necessarily
reduced. The unique geometries possible with 3D printing can reduce a part that
typically has dozens or hundreds of parts to few — or to one single part. With
no welding, riveting, or other fastening needed to keep the part together, not
only are SKUs reduced, but so too are potential points of failure.

Lightweighting

Every ounce of weight matters when it comes to
equipment meant to fly. Lighter-weight parts means less fuel, improving not
only the carbon footprint of a flight but also the cost to fly.

Materials innovations in 3D printing are
seeing constant improvements in different metals and polymers approved for use
in different equipment. Many of these engineering-grade materials are familiar
to those who have worked with them in traditional manufacturing — translating
these formulations into 3D printable materials is bringing their capabilities
together with part consolidation and other time- and material-reducing benefits
to create altogether lighter final parts.

Freedom
of Design

Many working with design for additive
manufacturing (DfAM) like to proclaim that the technology offers great “freedom
of design,” as complex geometries impossible to make with other manufacturing
processes are for the first time possible.

Design methods like topology optimization and
generative design are developing new shapes never before dreamed of that can be
created only by 3D printing. These complex, often lattice-like designs not only
reduce weight by including material only where necessary, but are often stronger
than legacy designs. While certain constraints of course still exist, and may
vary by 3D printing technology and material used, these are in many ways
significantly reduced from those seen in traditional, subtractive manufacturing
processes. New interior and exterior aircraft components can be designed to
replace stodgy original parts, adding both design finesse and extreme
functionality.

Rapid
Prototyping

The earliest use of 3D printing is also its original nomenclature: rapid prototyping.

Quickly going from a napkin sketch idea to a
CAD design to a first prototype — and then a second, third, and so on —
speeds up the time-to-market for new products. While traditional manufacturing
may require multiple iterations to be sent back and forth over weeks or months,
the fast-paced aircraft industry can see much faster turnaround when designs
can be created and finalized within days or weeks.

Low-Volume
Production

As large as the aerospace industry is, by
total volume the sheer number of aircraft produced is relatively small compared
to, say, automotive or appliance production.

High-value, low-volume production is a perfect
fit for 3D printing. Whereas many traditional manufacturing processes require
expensive tooling and molding to be made, creating economies of scale for mass
production, no molding is necessary for additive manufacturing. One or a few
pieces may be made at a time — including different designs on the same build
plate — with no additional molding or tooling costs. The point of inflection for
additive versus traditional manufacturing typically requires hundreds or
thousands of parts to be made before traditional techniques are more
cost-effective — and while that may ultimately reduce costs to pennies per
injection molded part, before that crossover point, 3D printing is more
cost-effective. This is especially the case when using high-value metal
powders, when material savings are imperative; 3D printing eliminates
significant waste of material as only the material needed for a given build need
be used, and much else can be recycled, rather than cutting away and wasting
material from solid blocks in subtractive manufacturing processes.

Digital
Inventory

When an aircraft is approaching the end of its
useful life, often it can be salvaged through replacing certain parts to keep
it flying. This is often done through use of physical warehouses, where these
spare parts were stored on shelves until needed. These spare parts, in most
cases, were made at the same time as the original mass-produced OEM parts, set
aside to await replacement demand for worn parts. If that demand never comes,
though, they were a waste of not only the time and cost of producing them, but
also of storing them on shelves for however many years. Worse, if that demand
comes but spares are out of stock — especially those forever out of production
— the lack of a small part may ground a plane.

Rather than physically keeping goods on
shelves, digital fabrication methods allow for storage of a design file that
can be 3D printed on demand. 3D printing a replacement part allows for only
those parts needed to ever be made — again without need for first producing
costly molding or tooling. These on-demand spare parts can also be made
anywhere with the appropriate technology, rather than awaiting OEM delays that
can all too easily run up into weeks or months.

Flying
High With 3D Printing

The production of aircraft, from prototype to spare parts, is increasingly benefitting from the use of 3D printing in the supply chain. Decentralized production, new design possibilities, and reductions in time, materials, and costs are offering new ways for aircraft to keep flying high.

The post Why Is The Aircraft Industry Using 3D Printing? appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

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How Rapid Prototyping Has Revolutionized Product Development

From demonstrating proof of concept to testing the viability of a new part, prototypes are an essential part of the design process. Advancements in rapid prototyping technology, including processes like CNC machining and SLS rapid prototyping, have completely revolutionized the way that engineers review, test, and display their final designs.

What is rapid prototyping?

Rapid prototyping refers to a variety of computer-aided manufacturing processes that are capable of replicating parts from digital models. These processes are highly accurate and take far less time than traditional manufacturing methods.

Many engineers automatically associate rapid prototyping with additive manufacturing processes like 3D printing. Parts made with additive manufacturing are created by layering plastic, resin, or other materials in the shape of the final product. Some post-processing may be required to remove support structures and achieve the desired finish.

Rapid prototyping can also be accomplished with subtractive manufacturing. Subtractive processes like CNC machining create parts by removing layers from a block of metal, wood, or resin. Sheet metal prototyping can also be used to bend or cut metal into the desired shape based on computer-provided specifications.

In general, additive processes like SLA or SLS rapid prototyping are used to create complicated designs and low-cost visual models. Subtractive processes like CNC rapid prototyping are used for durable end-use parts or detailed models with high manufacturing tolerances.

Why traditional manufacturing isn’t enough

Prototyping is an essential part of the design process, but it hasn’t always been economically viable for most design teams. Creating a prototype with traditional manufacturing methods is often incredibly expensive and takes too long for an efficient design cycle.

The main problem is that most traditional manufacturing processes like injection molding require custom molds, tools, and other starting equipment. These non-recurring costs are negligible for large print runs, but they become prohibitively expensive for single prototypes.

As a result, many engineers were reduced to creating custom prototypes by hand or paying high up-front costs to a manufacturing specialist. Design teams were faced with the choice of either paying for an expensive prototype or sending a design to production without proper testing.

Luckily, rapid prototyping has none of the problems that come with traditional manufacturing. Processes like CNC machining and SLS rapid prototyping have no start-up costs, can be completed in short time frames, and allow engineers to create an exact replica of their original design.

Efficient and affordable production

When the first rapid manufacturing methods were developed, engineers immediately saw the potential for prototyping and design. Thanks to computer-aided technology, even a standard CNC turning service could now be used to create perfect replicas without the costs typically associated with traditional manufacturing.

All rapid prototyping services share the same feature of low start-up costs and a standardized price per unit. Because no custom molds or equipment are required, the per-unit price remains nearly identical for all levels of production. This makes it viable to order one, five, fifty, or a hundred parts on an as-needed basis.

Rapid prototyping lets engineers order scale models of their designs with incredibly short lead times. Depending on the rapid prototyping service, finished parts could be delivered within less than one week. Online manufacturing platforms streamline the process even further by introducing instant quote generation and an accessible online portal where engineers can track and manage existing orders.

With low costs and short lead times, it’s no surprise that many engineers have added rapid prototyping as a standard part of their design process. Design teams can compare visual models, test different materials, and create a perfect version of their product for final manufacturing.

Common applications for rapid prototyping

Services like 3D printing and CNC rapid prototyping are widely used by both individual and corporate design teams. Rapid prototypes are often used throughout the entire design process to help engineers create accurate parts and avoid costly changes during actual production.

  • Conceptual models: One of the most popular uses of rapid prototyping is to create proof-of-concept models during the early stages of the design process. These models are used to communicate ideas and demonstrate project viability to interested parties. Thanks to the speed and efficiency of processes like SLS rapid prototyping, engineers can rely on these models to be available early in the design cycle.
  • Functional prototypes: The parts made with SLS and CNC rapid prototyping are as durable and functional as parts made with traditional manufacturing. Depending on the process, the part will often look and feel exactly the same as the consumer-ready product. This means that engineers can make changes to the prototype and trust that they will reflect accurately on the final design.
  • Pre-production design: Some prototypes show that a design is ready, while others highlight obvious flaws and areas that need additional work. The main benefit of rapid prototyping is that it allows engineers to go through an iterative design process. As soon as a change is made, the design team can order a new prototype and expect to receive it within a viable timeframe.

From 3D printing to sheet metal prototyping, rapid manufacturing can be used to create highly accurate models of nearly any design. Test the possibilities and compare material options by uploading a design to the 3D Hubs manufacturing platform today.

The post How Rapid Prototyping Has Revolutionized Product Development appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

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LAIKA’s Brian McLean Talks About 3D Printed Faces for Studio’s New Stop Motion Animation Film

While attending SOLIDWORKS World 2019 in Dallas recently, I learned during my interview with Stratasys that the company’s multi-material J750 3D printer, which offers over 500,000 different color combinations, was the only 3D printer used during production of Missing Link, the latest stop motion animation film from Oregon-based LAIKA. The movie is about Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman), an investigator of myths and monsters, and the legendary Sasquatch (Zach Galifianakis), better known as Mr. Link, or Susan. Together with Sir Lionel’s old friend Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana), they set out across the globe on a mission to find the long-lost valley of Shangri-la, said to be home to the Yetis…who just might be Mr. Link’s long-lost cousins.

The film takes place all around the world, including London, a ship on the ocean, a logging town in Santa Ana, snowy mountains, and a forest in the Pacific Northwest…which is where I was last week. I was lucky enough to join a group of other journalists on a behind-the-scenes tour of the studio ahead of the film’s release on April 12th. Take a look at the trailer below:

It took LAIKA roughly five years to make Missing Link, which director and writer Chris Butler called its “most ambitious film to date.” It was also the first to feature bespoke facial animation, as the Stratasys J750 was used to create the film’s over 106,000 3D printed faces. Thanks to the “amazing level of nuance” of the characters’ facial expressions, it’s much easier to become emotionally invested in these silicone puppets for a full-length feature film. LAIKA uses Maya to design the 3D printable faces for its stop motion puppets, which easily snap on and off with coded magnets…an ingenious solution for switching the many facial expressions that make up a character.

While on the tour, we had the chance to see plenty of movie magic, and speak to the people responsible for making it happen, including the studio’s head of production, costume designer, creative lead, practical effects director, supervising production designer, and VFX supervisor. The only thing that could have made the day better, at least in my book, was if Hugh Jackman himself had strolled in during the tour…which sadly did not happen.

However, we did get the chance to hear from Brian McLean, LAIKA’s Director of Rapid Prototyping, about the studio’s use of 3D printing to make the faces for its stop motion animation characters. LAIKA is no stranger to Stratasys technology, having worked with its J750 3D printer since 2015, but its 3D printing journey began long before then.

The studio’s first 3D printer, which was used to make the faces for its 2009 film Coraline, was the compact Objet Eden260 from Stratasys, which uses Polyjet technology and has been used to create other stop motion animation projects in the past. This 3D printer jets down liquid resin and liquid support in very fine layers, which are then cured by UV lights.


“The reason why we chose this technology was because it was known for its precision and known for its accuracy, especially those fine feature details,” McLean explained.

Because the Objet Eden260 was a single material system, the faces for Coraline were all 3D printed in white resin and then hand-painted. While McLean said the 3D printer was “amazing,” he noted that it did rather limit the level of sophistication that could be used when painting the characters.

The next logical step was color, which is why LAIKA used 3D Systems’ ZPrinter 650 (now known as the ProJet 660Pro) for its films ParaNorman and The BoxTrolls, as it was the only color 3D printer on the market at the time, though McLean said it “was a bear” to work. The ZPrinter 650 features colored glue in cyan, yellow, and magenta, which is sprayed through an inkjet head onto fine layers of white powder.

Unfortunately, this 3D printer only provided a 60% yield on LAIKA’s 3D printed faces, because the dry powder is exposed to the ambient temperature and humidity in the studio. In McLean’s words, Portland is “rainy as hell,” which means that the powder is absorbing lots of humidity. So any puppet face that’s 3D printed will come out looking different in the winter than it does in the summer, which doesn’t do a lot for consistency. That’s why LAIKA was excited to enter the world of resin color 3D printing.

“We had resin in just black and white, then we had color, but the color was powder. The goal had always been, and the exciting thing was, as soon as we can get colored resin, then we have the best of both worlds – we have the precision and the accuracy and the repeatability, but we can add color,” McLean explained.

LAIKA used the Stratasys Connex3, which wasn’t in the room during the tour, to help create three characters for its 2016 film Kubo and The Two Strings. Unfortunately, it only offered a total of three mixable color options. But then Stratasys came out with the J750, which “gave you the ability to print six colors at once.” LAIKA was actually a beta user for the J750, before immediately purchasing “the first five off the assembly line” once the multi-material system was officially released.

“So long story short, we saw this technology, we thought it was where the industry was going, and we got a few of the printers in,” McLean said.

“The hardware that Stratasys had created was really cool, but the software was really limiting, and we ended up partnering with an independent software developer that allowed us to do this really advanced color placement with resin placement.”

McLean explained that after a conference presentation on The BoxTrolls, a LAIKA employee ended up sitting next to a representative from the far-reaching Fraunhofer research organization, who mentioned the organization’s Cuttlefish advanced slicer software. Fraunhofer’s software, which McLean said “saw through” voxel and resin development, intrigued the studio.

“We take for granted a lot of color technology because of the decades that have gone into color calibration in 2D printing,” McLean said. “We’re very used to being able to see a picture on our computer screen and print it out on our inkjet printer and the colors come out pretty accurate.”

Stratasys was willing to let LAIKA use Cuttlefish with the Connex3 and J750, but when it released the GrabCAD Voxel Print software solution in 2017, its software capabilities were expanded to allow for, among other things, better control of voxel-level colors.

“So we were able to leverage the research that Fraunhofer had done, combine it with the hardware that Stratasys had created, and during the production of ‘Missing Link,’ we were able to produce 3D color printed faces that literally no one else in the world had the sophistication to do.”

The J750 also works fast, as McLean explained that a whole row of unique character faces, with different expressions, can be 3D printed in about an hour and 35 minutes.

“Complexity doesn’t add time to the printing process,” he explained. “The only thing that adds time to the printing process is how tall an object is.”


McLean also showed us the “nightmare fuel” of what was underneath the 3D printed puppet faces, calling the whole set-up “really fancy Mr. Potato Heads.” The faces are more like 3D printed masks with eye holes, while the eyes underneath can be subtly moved with an X-acto knife.

“We will spend anywhere between six months to sometimes even as long as a year designing the character’s head,” McLean said. “And when I say designing the character’s head, I’m not talking about what he looks like, I’m talking about what the audience never sees – the internal components. And the reason we spend so much time is we want to give the animators ultimate control when they’re out on set.

“People have heard that cliche saying – the eyes are the windows to the soul. There’s a tremendous amount of performance and life that the animators are pumping through these characters through the eyes. So we want to make sure that this little mechanism that we’ve created and engineered is going to give them the ultimate control that they need.

“Certain animators will want different tension…some animators want the eyeball to be loose, other animators want the eyeball to be tight. Or they’ll want the lid to be loose, and other ones want it tight. So this [mechanism] you can independently tension the eyelid or the eyeball. Now the thing that’s really crazy about certain eyelids is that this is just a vacu-formed thin sheet of plastic. But when you watch it animate, you can’t tell that that’s just a thin piece of plastic.”

LAIKA needed to find an innovative way to animate both the face and the connecting fur of the character Mr. Link, whom McLean hilariously referred to as “an avocado with a face.” It took the studio over a year to come up with a driver system, which is 3D printed out of strong ABS and has embedded magnets inside, which push and pull the fur of Mr. Link’s head into shapes that match the rest of the face.



By using 3D printing to make the faces, the studio is taking the “normal steps of animation and flipping it on their heads.”

“Normally in animation…the animators will go through, they’ll draw it out, they’ll block out the scene, they’ll get the body movements all defined and the timing just right and the acting, and then the last thing that they do is they add the facial animation on top,” McLean explained. “We’re doing facial animation months before an animator’s even on set with their puppet. Because of our process of needing to animate faces, send them to the printer, print out hundreds and hundreds of faces for a shot, process them, test them, and deliver them, we need months to do that. So when an animator is out on set, they are doing a live action performance with the body, they’re capturing it in real time frame by frame, but the facial animation is already pre-determined and already locked down.”

When asked, McLean said they have thought about 3D printing the puppets themselves, especially as the technology is being slowly adopted throughout the various departments in LAIKA. So we’ll see what comes next for the innovative studio.

Missing Link comes out on April 12th, and I for one can’t wait to buy my ticket…I haven’t even seen it yet and I’m already emotionally invested in these amazing puppets.

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[Images: Sarah Saunders for 3DPrint.com]

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Sinterit’s SLS 3D Printing and Flexible Materials Used to Make Strong Textiles for Opera Costumes

Spongee printed from Flexa Soft

Engineering, textiles, and additive manufacturing are different industries with different growth patterns, but they are connected by an important point: structures. Additionally, each of these industries have to struggle with limitations in order to build products for less money and materials and at a higher rate of speed. But rapid prototyping has changed how these things are built and opened the door to numerous new possibilities.

Selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing, also known as powder bed fusion, is an accurate and durable technology that, while perhaps not the fastest method in time to part, is definitely a good choice when it comes to machines that can provide repeatable results or that print batches of many things at once. It also gives users more design freedom, which is why it’s possible to 3D print materials inspired by knitting and weaving.

But engineers aren’t typically interested in textile applications, which is why the fashion industry is driving the push to reproduce flexible features through 3D printing…leading to the invention of such innovations as hexagonal shapes corresponding to hinge joints with a pivoted angle. This kind of textile structure does not have a flexible, elastic surface, but can bend under pressure and deform.


There are many applications for flexible structures in the textile world, from decorative fabrics for interior design to upholstery and scenography, which is the design and painting of theatrical scenery. Along these same lines, SLS 3D printing can be used to create flexible textiles for theatrical costumes as well, which is what Mingjing Lin and Tsai-Chun Huang – PhD candidates in Fashion and Textile research at the Royal College of Art in London – have been working on.

Lin said, “3D printing is our media to probe creative possibilities generated from merging unlike/dynamic elements, such as digital technology and craft, traditional opera and modern performance, as well as East and West.”

Two years ago, the two began working with Polish desktop SLS 3D printer manufacturer Sinterit on creating costumes for Beijing Opera performances of “Farewell My Concubine.” Lin’s specialty is 3D printing, while Huang’s is in pleating, and the two were challenged to create 3D printed costumes that were both sustainable and flexible.

These couldn’t be just any costumes – in this opera, the costumes are an extremely important part of the performance, and had to be utterly amazing. The material used for the costumes needed to fulfill two functions: successfully create and hold the shape that the artist designed, while also being wearable enough that the performers could move freely about the stage. Clearly, this was no job for sewing mere materials like silk and cotton: 3D printing was needed to create more “dramatic geometry,” as Sinterit put it.


For this daunting task, Lin and Huang used the company’s Lisa 3D printer and special Flexa TPU material, which comes in Black, Soft, and Bright for use in various applications. Flexa is very wearable, and the costumes created with the material were able to synchronize with the performers’ bodies while at the same time retaining their shapes, which would not have been possible to achieve using more traditional materials.

The deep color of Flexa Black made it perfect for this particular opera, though Flexa Bright may be a better choice for textile fiber and costume designers, as this durable material can be dyed into different colors; Flexa Soft has the lowest hardness of the series, and is often used to design sportswear prototypes and sensory fabrics.

Obviously, those who work in textiles can find a myriad of uses for 3D printable materials that are both strong and flexible. But here’s the thing – while I noted above that engineers aren’t typically interested in this kind of application, I also believe that it would be to their best interests if they were. Think of the kinds of products they could make with materials, like Sinterit’s Flexa, that are strong enough to hold the specific shapes that are needed for different applications but are also flexible enough to bend and deform under pressure and then spring back into position. But maybe I’m not the best judge – does anyone out there know of any engineering-related applications that are using flexible textiles? Let us know!

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