TriTech 3D
"You're always contending with trying to make sure that you have the best readiness for your vehicles and equipment,” explains Foster Ferguson, Senior Director, Aerospace & Defense at Stratasys, and a retired Lieutenant Colonel for the United States Marine Corps.
It was there where Ferguson, having spent two decades in supply chain logistics, and as a former Commander for a maintenance battalion with a mission focused on intermediate level repair for everything from trucks to optics to radios and ground equipment, began thinking about additive manufacturing (AM).
“We started on that journey knowing that there was pretty substantial capability out there and we started looking around and trying to find out who we could partner with,” Ferguson says of how the mission brought them to Stratasys. “We trained a team of about ten Marines, supply guys, warehouse guys, machinists and technicians. We quickly learned that these mechanics that are working on these things day in and day out know the areas that they need to affect. Additive was just this wonderful alternative.”
As the US Department of Defense's curiosity in AM heightened, policy was being created, but Ferguson was nearing a crossroads: to stay in the military or retire. Instead, Stratasys wanted to hire him to support its government military activity, and the AM journey continued.
Forcing the future
Ferguson describes the current state of AM adoption in the aerospace, space and defence industries as being at an inflection point. The Lockheed Martins, Boeings, Northrop Grummans and Blue Origins (and most recently, SpaceX) of the world are taking a digitised approach to production and designing with additive in mind, where it makes sense. Ferguson believes there is great opportunity for AM, primarily around supply chain, localised manufacture, and sustainability, but more could be done to encourage adoption.
"Awards should have some sort of additive component,” Ferguson suggests. “Policy and awards will drive that if it's written into the language for organisations to really think critically about it. We have to force ourselves to move into the future.”
Global events and pressures have undoubtedly played a role in forcing companies to innovate. We witnessed this at the height of the pandemic when 3D printing experienced a fresh surge as its banner ability to manufacture locally and on-demand seemed like a silver bullet in a world of supply chain disruption. But is AM really having the profound impact on the aerospace supply chain that was promised? Ferguson shares an example from a recent visit to an unnamed defence prime manufacturing parts for space in the U.S., and describes being ‘blown away’ by the volumes being churned out of a fleet of seven F900 FDM systems.
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“It was everything from production support to design iterations, into the full end of that spectrum for production parts fully integrated into the platform. That's happening in a lot of locations,” Ferguson says. “I think that if an organisation is not considering additive as part of their strategy for manufacturing, then they're behind, and I really feel that we've crossed that chasm where we've had the early adopters and now we're getting into this early majority.”
A decade has passed since Stratasys made headlines with its 1,000 3D printed parts for an Airbus A350 XWB aircraft. Each of those parts was printed using Stratasys' flagship FDM technology in Airbus certified ULTEM 9085 as part of a schedule risk production activity to increase supply chain flexibility. Since then, Stratasys has expanded its polymer technology offering through a number of acquisitions and internal developments and now counts five core technologies alongside a catalogue of advanced materials. Ferguson believes that polymers, in particular, have provided agile ground for aerospace innovation to happen, especially for in-field defence manufacturing where the barrier can be much lower than metals.
“When you get into high-performance thermoplastics with our FDM technology, they're filled with different types of materials,” Ferguson explains. “We have a nylon material that's 35% chopped carbon fibre, it's essentially the same mechanical strength as aluminium. I can go from 140 parts on an assembly down to 16. That changes the weight, and of course the speed to design. When you're talking about how much it costs to send a rocket into space, every kilogramme has to be measured. That's where polymer additive is nicely positioned.”
Here in the UK, Senior Aerospace BWT, a supplier to regional, military, private jet, and rotorcraft markets, is using a pair of Stratasys Fortus 450mc 3D printers from Tri-Tech 3D to produce interior components for low-pressure air ducting systems and air handling in aircraft interiors. After delivering its first duct for flight use on regional passenger jets in 2018, the company has supplied hundreds of lightweight, flight-ready interior aircraft parts. More recently, BAE Systems installed the first two Stratasys F3300 systems in the UK via Laser Lines. The F3300 was launched last year to provide a ‘step change’ in print speed with rates up to twice those of current high production FDM systems. BAE Systems plans to use the technology to drive product improvements, while reducing time to market across the company’s Air sector products. At the time, Steven Barnes, Additive Manufacturing Lead for BAE Systems Air sector, commented that the machines are giving the British defence company the ability to “rapidly prototype new parts,” and “stand ready-to-produce one-off spare parts at the touch of a button.” Without going into detail, Ferguson concurs that BAE Systems’ engineers are “very visionary” in their plans for the technology.
“It's a completely new platform,” Ferguson says of the F3300. “We've designed a lot of sensors and information flow, so that will continue to evolve, and I think that the user will have a very informative experience, and certainly when it's integrated into their other systems, it'll be a real asset for them.
“It's been a lot of work over the years, but we built this in collaboration with our customers.”
Digitising supply chains
Stratasys reseller Tri-Tech 3D’s Robert Pitts recently described 'AM utopia’ as the ability to print functional, end-use parts. That 1,000 parts on an aeroplane figure from 2014 is now more like 2,500, but that doesn’t mean we’ve quite reached utopia yet. At the recent AMADS Conference in the UK, in a conversation about AM in defence, John Sneden, the Air Force Director of Propulsion at the US Air Force Life Cycle Management Centre, commented, “If I’m at war and it takes 6-9 months to deliver the part, how useless is that?” When TCT spoke to Stratasys' former VP of Aerospace about aerospace in 2021, the takeaway was that AM confidence was an ongoing challenge. And much like the supposed silver bullet in supply chain, digital inventories, often lauded as the holy grail for AM in a production capacity, are far from easy to implement. Though, according to Ferguson, aerospace organisations very much want to.
“Going back to the days of being in the Marine Corps, taking these large defence logistics agencies that have warehouses of stock and contracts that aren't responsive to the needs,” Ferguson recalls, “how do we position a digital inventory, but then of critical importance is, how do you secure it from a cybersecurity perspective?”
The aerospace sector is, naturally, risk averse. You cannot have failures at 33,000 feet in the air, nor on the ground in a combat zone, and while the sector has led the way for a lot of AM adoption, that aversion can be limiting. Yet, in addition to clear avenues like lightweighting and MRO, Ferguson feels there is room for the aerospace sector to leverage AM to address further challenges.
“I think that there's an opportunity to address quality issues with additive,” Ferguson explains. “When you're getting into testing and quickly developing fit function checks, the things that might be required through a quality inspection, quality assurance inspection, additive is a great tool for that. Quality and safety are major issues. Stratasys has got a great opportunity here to help these engineers with quality and inspection.”
Aerospace, space and defence are often grouped together, but they each have very different demands. While aerospace may practice more caution with time tested standards, the space industry is fast moving, and there’s no blueprint for how things should be done. Stratasys recently provided 3D printed samples that will be brought to the lunar surface in a series of Northrop Grumman sponsored experiments as part of Aegis Aerospace’s first Space Science & Technology Evaluation Facility mission. Whether it’s on the moon, on a commercial airliner or in combat, focusing on each of those unique opportunities will be key to ensuring meaningful adoption continues.
“Aerospace is unique because you generally have a lot of innovation. You're going to push the horizons of technologies, software and materials,” Ferguson says. “Those days of being more of a generalist are gone. We very much have a vertical focus with our customers – it's helping pull us all forward.”
