Lockheed Polecat UAV: the plane you can print

[docm]

Yup, you can use 3D Rapid Prototyping to make graphite composite parts for an airplane:<br /><br />http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9602-a-plane-you-can-print.html<br /><br />http://computer.howstuffworks.com/stereolith.htm<br /><br />The plane is pretty cool too <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[nacnud]

I think the ablity to print 3D part will be an ammazing boon for off world exploration. Rather that trying to prement what with break you could just take some feed stock and and a printer.

 

[docm]

As long as the engineers design parts with this in mind it could have all kinds of implications. Just as important is researching how to make the 'print media' from indigenous materials.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[chriscdc]

Well, off world manufacture for many goods would have many cost benefits, once you get over the initial research and investment. For example you could have massive chip manufacture, with any vacuum chamber taking up hardly any mass e.g. walls made of mylar as opposed to cm thick stainless steel.<br />Also microwave sintering of lunar regolith could produce handy structural material, and you just have to take up the mold first.<br /><br />One cool (not directly space) idea would be the printing of artificial muscles, sensors and electronics. This would allow you to literally print robots. Yep, I'm betting that the first economically successful androids will look more like walking jelly than tin cans.

 

[docm]

The tissue egineering aspect is already in gear, and has been for a few years. They're using inkjet tech. to print the cultures, proteins, vessel growth factors etc. and grow them on printed substrates. Work is progressing as we speak;<br /><br />Old article, but should clarify the basics;<br /><br />http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3292<br />http://128.6.231.79/news/index.htm<br />http://www.ices.cmu.edu/bioeng.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mdodson]

Wait! How did we get from a "microwave-sized" SLA machine to a 28 m wingspan? <br />The article seems to confuse cured resin parts, and ones laid up from graphite cloth and epoxy.<br />Wind tunnel models are a darned good used of stereolithography. I'm skeptical about larger structure.

 

[docm]

http://manufacturing.georgiainnovation.org/news/details/14<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>But speed and stealth performance are not everything: cost matters too. And since UAVs tend to crash more often than piloted planes, the race is on among UAV makers to make them cheaper. The Skunk Works thinks a technique called 3D rapid prototyping, or “3D printing”, is the best way to lower costs.<br /><br />In rapid prototyping, a three-dimensional design for a part – a wing strut, say – is fed from a computer-aided design (CAD) system to a microwave-oven-sized chamber dubbed a 3D printer. Inside the chamber, a computer steers two finely focussed, powerful laser beams at a polymer or metal powder, sintering it and fusing it layer by layer to form complex, solid 3D shapes.<br /><br /><b>The technique is widely used in industry to make prototype parts – to see if, for instance, they are the right shape and thickness for the job in hand. Now the strength of parts printed this way has improved so much that they can be used as working components.<br /><br />About 90 per cent of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.</b><br /><br />“The entire Polecat airframe was constructed using low-cost rapid prototyping materials and methods,” says Frank Mauro, director of UAV systems at the Skunk Works.<br /><br />“The big advantage over conventional, large-scale aircraft production programmes is the cost saving in tooling as well as the order-of-magnitude reductions in fabrication and assembly time.”<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>