Airbus’ New 3D Printed Plane

Airbus’ New 3D Printed Plane

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Airbus has just unveiled a revolutionary new 3D printed plane. While this aircraft is not full-scale, it’s a gigantic milestone in aero manufacturing. This 4m drone represents the future for a company like Airbus and how it could harness this new technology for their eventual fleet of 3D printed jets.

This isn’t the first foray Airbus has made into 3D printing. Previously, the French company made waves with 3D printed components in aircraft such as the A350 XWB, which has more than a mind-boggling 1,000 printed parts. But now comes Thor, and it blows everything else out of the water.

Thor, which stands for Test of High-tech Objectives in Reality (THOR), will likely be used for risky aerodynamic investigations with the overarching aim of proving to the world the viability of 3D printed aircraft.

Thor weighs just 20 kg and sports 50 3D printed parts, two electric motors, and a remote control mechanism. Airbus says one of these can be printed in less than a single month.

“This is a test of what’s possible with 3D printing technology,” said Detlev Konigorski, who was in charge of developing Thor. “We want to see if we can speed up the development process by using 3D printing not just for individual parts but for an entire system.”

Gunnar Haase, chief engineer of Thor, reports that the plane is very stable and flies beautifully.

This development demonstrates that 3D printing technology has matured far beyond its early hobbyist days, and soon enough we could all be flying around in planes that just came out of a printer.