3D Printed Ornithopter Wings. Researchers at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Laboratory building a miniature ornithopter (that's a flying device that uses flapping wing motions for lift) had a problem: the wings were difficult to create due to their small size and mechanical requirements. The problem was solved by using 3D printing techniques to create the wings. The 3D printing approach also was substantially faster than previous methods: "reduced the time of a wing design cycle to a matter of minutes". According to their paper's abstract: An ornithopter with a mass of 3.89g has been constructed using the 3D printing technique and has demonstrated an 85-second passively stable untethered hovering flight.
3D Printed Fiberglass. Flying a 3D Printed Airplane - Fabbaloo Blog - Fabbaloo. 3D printed parts have been in production aircraft for some years now, but what about printing an Entire Aircraft? That's what researchers Andy Keane and Jim Scanlan from the University of Southampton achieved. The 2 metre wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has both impressive design and performance: Almost 100Mph (160Kph) flight speedNear silent cruise modeEntirely "snap fit" with custom designed connections between componentsAbility to construct the plane in minutes with no tools The aircraft's components were printed on an EOS P730 in Nylon.
We're thinking that nylon may have better physical characteristics than more common 3D printer materials for an environment as demanding as flight. This amazing prototype shows that very complex items can cycle from design to implementation in short order, cutting months off the process. Design Models, Inc. - Aerospace Engineering Portfolio. The Boeing Phantom Ray - 3D Printing goes airborne.
Space Craft Parts - 3D Printing. 3D Metal Printing. Scanning Service.