AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2013 - 83

PIPER’S 3-D printer (left) is used mostly

for tooling and test pieces, such as this
door model for the now-defunct Altaire
(below left).

would be a small amount of time and some
minor costs for materials.
According to Piper’s Lou Ciarlelli, the
material costs about $5 per cubic inch.
Ciarlelli runs Piper’s 3-D printer, which
is primarily used for tooling and interior
parts. Creating permanent tool and die can
be very expensive for a manufacturer, so the
option to invest only $500 on a throwaway
mold is pretty helpful when developing
new forms. Piper also has created new
interior parts, environmental ducting, and
overhead panels with the printer.
Creating cheaper and faster prototypes
means engineers are able to take more
chances with their designs. “It has made
them proactive with trying new things,”
Ciarlelli said. And the fact that Cirrus
houses the printer in the experimental
department shows how the company views
the impact of the technology. “It can help
to understand how a part is manufactured
while it’s being designed,” Henriksen said.
“In an airplane program, that step could
otherwise be years in the future.” The cost
savings and reduced time to market definitely matter with manufacturers, but
given the variety of products and depth of
resources, 3-D printing is just one of many
technologies that can help.
For a boutique manufacturer of products for the STC market, 3-D printing
can be the difference between surviving
or not. AeroVoodoo President and CEO
Michael McConnell said anything you can
do to reduce the time to market is critical.
McConnell, who formerly served as CEO of
Eclipse Aviation, gives the example of a simple aerodynamic modification. Let’s say the
start-up company has budgeted 18 months
to design, develop, and certify the modification. Under normal circumstances it may
take all that time to simply design the part,
have a test piece manufactured, and then
test-fly it. But with 3-D printing that timeframe could be shortened by six months,
leaving more time for the paperwork to
sit with the FAA, as he said it usually does.
That’s six months faster to revenue.

McConnell said 3-D printing also has
the potential to bring a greater variety of
products to the market. If the company can
start making money faster, and spend less
on development, the market size doesn’t
need to be as large. So instead of having to
sell 100 units, a business may have to sell
only 50. That’s good news for owners of
less common aircraft, as small shops could
start popping up to offer much needed
modifications and replacement parts.
Homebuilders ultimately could benefit
the most from 3-D printing. All an owner
potentially has to do is design a brandnew part, send the file to a 3-D printing
shop, and a short time later it would come
in the mail. All of this is considerably less
expensive than having a company fabricate something new from steel or fiberglass.
Good consumer-grade printers are coming
on the market at a reasonable price. It’s
not crazy to think that a builder would buy
one specifically for the build process and
to modify parts.
There are drawbacks, of course. Only a
few of the materials are able to pass FAA
burn certification. While any 3-D printing
material could potentially be as good as a
tool or die, only a few can be used inside
an airplane. And as with any material,
there are inherent weaknesses. The failure points must be known and respected
for a homebuilder to use it properly. It’s
also one reason why manufacturers don’t
see the option of producing 3-D parts on
any sort of large scale. The other is cost.
The technology is often referred to as
rapid prototyping because that’s what
it’s best used for. Once the part is ready
to manufacture, it’s often much more
economical to make a mold or use other
traditional methods.
That said, the possibilities are just now
being explored. There are 3-D-printed
jet engines for radio-controlled airplanes, college undergraduates creating
3-D-printed remote-control airplanes for
the Department of Defense, and even GE is
using it in the development of new engines.
Custom-fitted seats, perfectly sculpted
aerodynamic mods, better cockpit layouts,
and more all are possible and probable if we
just hit Print.
AOPA
EMAIL ian.twombly@aopa.org

www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 83
http://www.AirFleetCapital.com http://www.Trade-A-Plane.com http://www.aopa.org/pilot
AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2013
