Filton, just outside Bristol, is where Britain's fleet of Concorde supersonic airliner was built. In a building near a wind tunnel on the same sprawling site, something even more remarkable is being created. Little by little a machine is ゛printing゛ a complex titanium landing-gear bracket, about the size of a shoe, which normally would have to be laboriously hewn from a solid block of metal. Brackets are only the beginning. The researchers at Filton have a much bigger ambition： to print the entire wing of an airliner.
Engineers and designers have been using 3D printers for more than a decade, but mostly to make prototypes quickly and cheaply before they embark on the expensive business of tooling up a factory to produce the real thing. As 3D printers have become more capable and able to work with broader range of materials, including production-grade plastics and metals, the machines are increasingly being used to make final products too. More than 20% of the output of 3D printers is now final product rather than prototypes, according to Terry Wohlers, who runs a research firm specialising in the field. He predicts that this will rise to 50% by 2020.
Using 3D printer as production tools has become known in industry as ゛additive゛ manufacturing (as opposed to the old, ゛subtractive゛business of cutting, drilling and bashing metal). The additive process requires less raw material and, because software drives 3D printers, each item can be made differently without costly retooling. The printers can also produce ready-made objects that require less assembly and things that traditional methods would struggle with - such as the glove pictured above, made by Within Technologies, a London company. It can be printed in nylon, stainless or titanium.
The printing of parts and products has the potential to transform manufaturing because it lowers the costs and risks. No longer does a producer have to make thousands, or hundreds o thousands, of items to recover his fixed costs. In a world where economies of scale do not matter any more, mass-manufacturing identical items may not be necessary or appropriate, especially as 3D printing allows for a great deal of customisation. Indeed, in the future some see consumers downloading products as they do digital music and printing them out at home, or at a local 3D production centre, having tweaked the designs to their own tastes. That is probably a faraway dream. Nevertheless, a new industrial revolution may be on the way.
