The warning about the vulnerability of the aerospace and defense industry’s supply chain came buried in the pages of a report issued by the consulting firm EY two years before the COVID-19 outbreak became a full-blown global crisis.
The company’s G150 is aimed at small, high-precision parts made of tough materials.
Before the coronavirus pandemic upended normal life and essentially shut down commercial airliners, the aviation industry had a projected need for 40,000 new aircraft—planes, helicopters, air taxis, and unmanned aerial vehicles—in the next 20 years.
Honeywell Aerospace, part of global commercial and consumer engineering conglomerate Honeywell, produces a large number of the impellers and blisks used in commercial aeroplanes.
Since 1996, the Plant 15 machining operations at Mercury Marine have included a reliance on automated machining cells. Over the years, the Fond du Lac, Wis.-based manufacturer and distributor of marine engines, parts, accessories and integrated systems has phased out some traditional manufacturing methods in favor of modern cells.
3D Systems said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided 510(k) clearance for maxillofacial surgical guides 3D printed using its LaserForm Ti and DuraForm ProX PA materials.
The concept of the digital twin in A&D was born in the 1970s, when NASA began employing full-scale virtual mock-ups of space capsules to forecast the performance of machines in outer space.
Extreme complexity is inherent to jet engines of all sizes, from those on a Boeing 777x to ones that power the smallest drone.
The service bureaus that grew in lockstep with 3D printing’s early rise in popularity have largely evolved into one-stop shops for a variety of machined, fabricated, plastic-injection molded, and of course 3D-printed parts.
It has become far too rare for manufacturers’ visions of an IIoT-fueled utopia to survive contact with reality. A Cisco survey finds that nearly 75 percent of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) projects are failing.
