Aircraft Made From 3D Printing

countertrolling tips news of a project undertaken at the University of Southampton, where engineers designed and created a functioning UAV using unusual methods. Quoting: "It was printed on an EOS EOSINT P730 nylon laser sintering machine, which fabricates plastic or metal objects, building up the item layer by layer. No fasteners were used and all equipment was attached using ‘snap fit’ techniques so that the entire aircraft can be put together without tools in minutes. The electric-powered aircraft, with a 2-meter wingspan, has a top speed of nearly 100 miles per hour, but when in cruise mode is almost silent. The aircraft is also equipped with a miniature autopilot developed by Dr. Matt Bennett, one of the members of the team."

Video

[Anonymous Coward]

More details and video here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20737-3d-printing-the-worlds-first-printed-plane.html?page=1

Re:Copyfight!

[dgatwood]

Am I the only one who gets the urge to steal a car when I see those ads? I mean, the whole "Gone In 60 Seconds" style of that ad kind of glamorizes all sorts of bad stuff. You might even be able to legitimately argue that those ads drove you to steal someone's handbag.... Besides, if brutally ripping a purse away from some elderly lady is no worse than pirating a DVD off the Internet, then we might as well all rape and pillage. After all, it's all the same level of wrong.

Nothing sane or rational can come of that ad. Just saying.

Terrorist Device

[dpilot]

So how long before 3d printers are illegal? I'm sure stuff like the rap rep, or whatever it's called will continue to be OK. But the truly nifty stuff, the ones that can make a drone or other truly "interesting" things?

I'd expect the 3d printer technology to get "capped" at something below the level of TFA. It'll be in the name of "stopping terrorism", but behind the scenes there'll be some terrified parties in the commercial sector that don't want their profit models rendered obsolete.

For the Sci-Fi example, read Joe Haldeman's "The Forever Peace" and pay special attention to the "nano-forge" the the corrupt BS surrounding that.

Re:Mass Production

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depends on what the market wants. Compared to the cost/unit of a high volume injection molding setup, the cost of a plastic laser sintered part is going to be downright sickening(the manufacturer [eos.info] doesn't list prices; but that typically means you don't want to know. 2x 50watt lasers, precision optics, control widgetry, etc. isn't going to be inexpensive, and such devices are not all that fast. Fast if you just count time from CAD to first part? Definitely. Fast per part? Not at all...) However, if the air force just has to have 15% more loiter time or whatever, they might be willing to put up with it.

Especially for something like UAVs, though, where small size and autonomous cheapness are usually the selling points, "20% better, 20x the price!" is going to have some trouble competing with "almost as good, and you can order spares by the container-load for barely more than the cost of plastics and just saturate the area!"

Re:Terrorist Device

[fluffy99]

Actually the whole point is that you CAN manufacture things you could not before. For example the internal structures of the wings. It's possible for instance with traditional mold&glue techniques to create a complex honeycomb pattern inside the wings, etc. Sure you could press out a zillion little internal pieces and build it up, but that's not practical and the result would be weaker and heavier.