3D-printed Titanium Parts Could Save Boeing Up To $3 Million Per Plane \/\/TOP\\\\
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Like most metal parts, they were previously manufactured via conventional methods such as forging and machining. Titanium is essential to the new Dreamliner design. It accounts for roughly $17 million of the $265 million in costs for the Dreamliner. Boeing reports the 3D-printed titanium components will reduce costs by roughly $2 to $3 million per Dreamliner. In typical year the company produces 144 Dreamliners, so reducing the cost of titanium parts will have a major impact.
As additive manufacturing technology continues to advance, my recommendation for Boeing would be to invest even more aggressively to replace third party components. In 2017, the FAA approved the first 3D printed structural aircraft component, which manufacturer Norsk Titanium estimates could save Boeing $3 million on every jet built [6]. Given the notoriously thin margins of the airplane industry, this development would likely be lauded by investors. I would also suggest that Boeing considers selling the 3D printed parts they create to competitors (including Airbus) since Boeing is a leader in developing this technology and may be able to generate significant incremental revenue from sales of these components.
"We are providing Boeing with an initial quantity of four parts per 787 airplane and are actively working to expand this order to possibly more than 1,000 parts per airplane, which if we achieve, could save Boeing $2 million to $3 million per airplane some years from now," a Norsk Titanium spokesman said via email to Computerworld. "If we achieve our goal of selling over 1,000 parts per 787, they would be located in a wide variety of structural applications."
Perhaps no industry has seen such a profound impact as aerospace. Boeing is projected to save up to $3 million per plane by 3D printing titanium parts on the 787 Dreamliner. Honeywell saved more than seven months of redesign through additive manufacturing. Airbus was able to create spacer panels in overhead storage compartments 15-percent lighter than previously capable.
An issue with the previous method of making titanium parts is the large amount of waste. Airplane parts would be constructed from large titanium blocks which meant that the remainder of these blocks would be wasted.
Norsk Titanium keeps the good and eliminates the bad via its use of 3D printing plasma deposition technology. Without going into too many details, this method can produce about 20 metric tons of airplane components in just a year and will save Boeing about 3 million USD per plane.
In a previous article, I had a look at how the use of additive manufacturing would save Boeing (NYSE:BA) several millions of dollars on costs of titanium parts for the Boeing 787. Expressed as a percentage of the sales price of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the savings would be less than 5% and one could easily say that the savings are too small to even consider talking about it. Where the previous article focused on the technical side of the use of titanium and savings on a unit basis, in this article, I want to zoom out and have a look at why these savings are relevant to the Boeing 787 program. So, this article dives a bit deeper in the financials, putting the costs aspect in the bigger picture.
The Boeing 787 consists of 15% of titanium parts and the value of these components is estimated to be $17 million. The shortest Boeing 787, the -8, has a list price of $229.5 million while the longest variant, the -10, has a list price of $312.8 million. The actual sales prices for the Boeing 787 are more likely to be between $115 million and $160 million, which would put the titanium costs expressed as a percentage of sales prices between 10% and 15%. So, the cost share of titanium alloys in the Dreamliner is significant and a cost reduction in that area would be most welcome.
The printing method by Norsk Titanium is expected to decrease the costs of the titanium parts by $2 million to $3 million, which means that savings for the titanium alloys will be between 12% and 18%.
Manufacturers also expect to increase productivity by more fully embracing additive manufacturing. By using 3D printing to produce parts for its 787s, Boeing expects to save approximately $2 million to $3 million per plane.
Print-on-demand technology could be pivotal in carrying out plans to travel to Mars. The capacity to print tools and replacement parts millions of miles from Earth is vital in the quest to manage risk and control costs. In some anticipated scenarios, some of the build materials for 3D printing would be mined from the Red Planet itself.
From 2018 on, after further parts are produced, Norsk Titanium process enables Boeing to reduce titanium costs on the 787 by $2-$3 million for each unit. With Boeing building 144 Dreamliners per year on average, the company will not only boost the Dreamliner profitability but will also save hundreds of millions that would be injected into other initiatives, such as its commercial space flight program.
Aircraft manufacturers widely use 3D printing in metal and plastic to reduce costs. For instance, Boeing plans to use 3D printed structural, titanium parts for their innovative 787 Dreamliner. That can save them up to $3 million per plane. An additional benefit of using 3D printed parts is that they weigh less, something essential for engineering aircraft.
But more than solely for prototyping, metal 3D printing is more frequently being adopted by major companies for direct implementation into aircraft production. Earlier this year Boeing announced a production plan that will integrate titanium 3D printing into the manufacturing of structural components for their 787 Dreamliner--the first time such a strategy has been taken to utilize metal AM in actual plane structure. Printing the parts with titanium, rather than producing the parts with traditional methods, is expected to save the company up to $3 million per plane. Further, GKN recently announced major developments in their metal 3D production for aerospace, which includes work with Saab for parts for their aircraft and research with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop methods to print large-scale aircraft structures, like entire frames. GKN is also working with Airbus Safran Launchers and the European Space Agency to produce metal 3D printed rocket nozzles that will reduce the part count by 90% and simultaneously reduce cost and production time.
Beyond its aesthetic value, titanium is also a significant weight-saver. Recent breakthroughs in 3D printing could see Boeing save $3 million on the total cost of manufacturing each of its passenger jets. Now that Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted them approval, structural airplane components 3D-printed from titanium are closer than ever to traversing our skies.
Melting and molding is exactly as it sounds: heating the metal into a molten liquid, and pouring it into a mold where it then cools and hardens. This too raises difficulties in the increased danger of the process, as well as the immense energy requirements to melt a metal with a notoriously high melting point.This is where 3D printing comes in. In 2006, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States military, awarded a $5.7 million contract to a consortium to develop new methods of producing titanium powder for numerous military applications. Specifically, they looked into aircraft and naval parts, armor plating and missile components. This development has become a central part of the titanium 3D printing process.
The current limitations mean that the possibility of large-scale titanium 3D printing is not reliable, but the development of new techniques could soon push back those boundaries and open new horizons for metal in 3D printing.DMLS is the most accessible metal 3D printing technology, but recently, new progress has been made using an alternative called Direct Energy Deposition (DED). A similar technique, Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD), was used by Boeing to produce the titanium bracket for their planes, and involves melting titanium wire with plasma.The process was reportedly 50 to 100 times quicker than traditional construction methods, used up to 50% less material, and Boeing estimate the technique could reduce the cost of a 3D printed plane by $3 million.
If we were to drop "plastic", the answer would be yes, Boeing is using 3D printing in the 787 Dreamliner. These are not plastic however but titanium. Somewhat stronger than your run-of-the-mill ABS plastic. From -3d-printed-parts-for-boeing-787s/ 2b1af7f3a8