ZAL Tech Center played host to this year's Red Cabin Aircraft Cabin AM Conference.
I’ve said it before, since working in additive manufacturing I’ve adopted a bit of a habit of playing “spot the additive application” whenever I board a plane. Great for editorial, but quite annoying, I would imagine, for my other half whenever we go on holiday.
The same happened last week as I hopped on a flight to Hamburg for the second Red Cabin Aircraft Cabin Additive Manufacturing conference. As I settled into the brash yellow and blue my seats of my budget aircraft (the glamorous life of the media), I began circling with imaginary red pen all of the areas where AM might find a useful home from the tens of assembled parts I could see in the arm rest mechanism to the unnecessary tray tables that had been bolted shut to restrict use in the rows of emergency exit seats (it's really almost TOO glamorous).
Two ferry rides later, it was exactly those types of applications that a collective of aerospace specialists and additive experts had gathered at the ZAL Tech Center, south of the River Elbe, to explore. If being privy to two days worth of brain storming sessions with a bunch of 3D printing-literate engineers shows you anything, it’s that those far flung ideas like personalised seats and bionic bathrooms are not a million miles away from reality. Though the suggestion of a real-life RoboCop may be taking things a little too far.
One company pushing such wild ambitions to the limit is Etihad Airways and steering those aspirations is Bernhard Randerath, VP, Design, Engineering & Innovation at Etihad Aviation Group, who spoke about the potential to 3D print 60% of a next-generation aircraft cabin with such gusto even the most sceptical in the room would have been ready to buy a ticket for the planned 2026 take off. “3D printing has a huge potential in our industry,” Randerath said but cautioned that acceptance on the market still needs some work.
There’s plenty of good reason to consider AM for spare parts, not least the fact that between aircraft C-checks, it’s estimated that around 5-10% of the passenger interior is found to be damaged, according to Etihad stats. While that leads one to wonder what on earth are those passengers are doing mid-flight, it also provides a big opportunity for additive to deliver parts at the point of need. That said, Randerath’s goals for additive go much further than the replacement of simple coat hooks and non-critical components. Etihad’s new Greenliner for example, a project with Boeing designed to test new and sustainable solutions for the aviation industry, is said to include many 3D printed components, which Etihad is using systems from EOS and BigRep to produce. Looking further into the future, he says AM could make it possible to carry out an entire retrofit of an aircraft (that means ripping everything out and starting over) in just 30 days, resulting in 30% faster upgrades.
Read more: How 3D printing is shaping the future of aircraft maintenance, repair & overhaul
Denmark-based aircraft component and service company SATAIR is looking at AM to "explore the benefits of agile manufacturing for aftersales parts," according to the company's Head of AM Solutions, Felix Hammerschmidt. The business deals with around 3.5 million part numbers, only 5% of which are plannable, which could open up a sizeable opportunity for AM to come in and fill the gap for those parts were repairs and part orders can’t be predicted. Hammerschmidt said SATAIR has already been supplying AM parts for some time; just last week it delivered a new wingtip to a customer and he says the company sells an AM tool every day. The ultimate vision is to have on-demand, on-site manufacturing of AM parts.
One of the biggest and least surprising takeaways was that standards and certification are a massive bottleneck in using AM for consumer-facing cabin parts. It echoed concerns I had heard just the week before at an event back here in the UK where several participants said they were more than willing to adopt additive but without the right standards in place, were unable to do so with the same confidence afforded by traditional methods of manufacture. There are conflicting ideas about how to best deal with the problems around standards and every answer seemed to open up a new challenge: Can we apply standards used for forging or milling in lieu of AM-specific guidelines? What happens if one a particular supplier is certified but then goes out of business? Will the rapid rate of technology innovation mean current AM standards will be irrelevant in five years time?
Stefan Ritt, new VP EMEA Operations at supersonic metal 3D printing company SPEE3D proposed “responsible risk taking” may be the answer to take the technology forward. That’s not to suggest throwing a 3D part on a commercial airliner and crossing our fingers but rather continuing to innovate instead of waiting for standardisation to come first. That said, pioneers may help get things done but you still need standards to make those innovations accessible to everybody else. Elsewhere, calls for a more common sense approach for low risk items were sounded as a way to speed up certification, with one supplier insinuating that the current rule sets for the sector are "overkill". During a talk from Dr. Aenne Köster, Head of Lufthansa Technik’s Additive Manufacturing Center, one audience member asked how the German airline had addressed certification for its hundreds of AM parts. The answer, inspection on a part by part bases, invited a rather shocked expletive from one audience member, which should give you some sort of indication towards how painstaking the process of certification is, and why it's not yet as widely adopted as AM vendors would like.
Dr. Aenne Köster, Head of Lufthansa Technik’s AM Center presents the benefits of AM cabin parts.
Post-processing was also cited as another concern, particularly for those customer-facing cabin parts where aesthetics are an all-important part of the consumer experience. Lionel Ridosz, AM Director at Safran Group, said there needs to be more materials available in a range of colours and textures, which comply with the necessary safety requirements like Ultem 9085, to avoid the need to post-process. Those comments mirrored that of Peeter Kruuv, Interior Project Manager at Magnetic MRO who said the time needed to post-process a part to a finished standard accepted by customers could cancel out the benefits of AM if it takes too long.
Day two of the conference was a good day for Stratasys. It turns out a lot of companies have adopted its F900 3D printing solution and Aircraft Interiors Solutions package including Diehl Aviation, which took home a prize at last year’s Purmundus Challenge for their 3D printed curtain header, and Boom Supersonic, a Colorado-based start-up building a Concorde-inspired next-generation aircraft. Diehl Aviation’s VP Research, Product Innovation Dr. Dietmar Völkle offered up his early experiences of AM working with one of the very first EOS EOSINT systems and shared how it was, at times, challenging to convince engineers that the technology would be relevant for the future. The company’s first entry in AM was with a small cap for a seat arm rest, a simple polymer component which could easily pass as a traditionally manufactured part, but the low volume requirements meant additive was a good fit, eliminating the need to produce a costly mould tool. Now, those curtain headers for the A350 XWB aircraft are the company’s largest serial 3D printed part to date, measuring up to 1140 x 720 x 240 mm and consisting of 12 components which are glued together. It’s ideal for a part which can require multiple variants depending on the aircraft and customer, but Völkle added that at 80 hours print time, the technology needs to be “faster, faster, faster.”
In the case of Boom Supersonic, the company is using three versions of Stratasys' FDM systems including the F370 for functional prototyping, Fortus 450CF for tooling, and the F900 for end-use components, as part of an ongoing partnership. Mike Jagemann, Head of XB-1 Production at Boom said the XB-1, which rolls out for testing this summer, will feature several hundred F900 printed components. That's in addition to the hundreds of manufacturing aids like drill blocks, which the company regularly prints to save time and money on assembly.
Jagemann presents an image of the hundreds of drill blocks 3D printed with Stratasys FDM technology.
One of the key positive outcomes of the conference was a unified understanding that the entire supply chain needs to work together to learn where and how this technology can be effectively applied. It's all well and good developing bionic brackets but without the correct standards in place to certify them or an airline that understands their long-term value, they're little more than a fancy concept that's nice to look at on a trade show floor. It was encouraging to hear champions like Randerath inviting manufacturers to "come and learn" from end-users so that they can feed back into the supply chain and link up the necessary authorities with the right manufacturers and machines.
While those 60% printed cabin dreams have their place, it's also important to know that "not all cabin replacement parts can make the AM cut," as Additive Flight Solutions' General Manager, Tan Chuan Ching explained. Although the company, a joint venture between Stratasys and SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC), has produced 1,000s of parts for commercial aircraft, AM is not a one size fits all answer to all your interior requirements. It's why examples like Lufthansa's re-designed wash basin filter which was printed to improve water flow, or its headphone jack modification, a simple plug which prevents misuse of the jack and "molten headphones", were encouraging to see as novel examples of where the technology adds real value in solving everyday challenges.
As a final, less technical observation, it was evident that outside of basic replacement parts, much of those future-thinking AM cabin concepts will first be experienced by travellers at business class level or above. So, it looks as though I'm likely to be circling those same areas on my yellow and blue economy seat for some time. Seat-envy aside, it's encouraging to know that by putting the right heads together across the supply chain at events like this, it may not be as long as once thought.
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