Futurist Foresight - Applied Technotopia

A look at 3D printing in the aerospace industry.

txchnologist:

Big Data Meets Industrial 3-D Printing

by Tomas Kellner, GE Reports

Even in the lofty world of aerospace components, GE’s new 3-D printed jet engine fuel nozzle is a rare bird. Workers build it as a single piece by welding together bits of superalloy dust with lasers. The new nozzle is 25 percent lighter and as much as five times more durable than the current nozzle made from 20 different parts.

But here’s the rub. 3-D printing is so new that engineers have to develop new quality-control methods before jumping into mass production. “We are dealing with a microscopic weld pool that’s moving at hundreds of millimeters per second,” says Todd Rockstroh, a mechanical engineer at GE Aviation. “Every cubic millimeter is a chance for a defect.”

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(via laboratoryequipment)

Another look at a rather special 3D printer.

prostheticknowledge:

MATAERIAL

A 3D Printing system that can create forms without the hindrance of gravity - video embedded below:

A brand new method of additive manufacturing. This patent-pending method allows for creating 3D objects on any given working surface independently of its inclination and smoothness, and without a need of additional support structures. Conventional methods of additive manufacturing have been affected both by gravity and printing environment: creation of 3D objects on irregular, or non-horizontal surfaces has so far been treated as impossible . By using innovative extrusion technology we are now able to neutralize the effect of gravity during the course of the printing process. This method gives us a flexibility to create truly natural objects by making 3D curves instead of 2D layers. Unlike 2D layers that are ignorant to the structure of the object, the 3D curves can follow exact stress lines of a custom shape. Finally, our new out of the box printing method can help manufacture structures of almost any size and shape.

More at the project’s website here