Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[GetRich1day]

Could be Airbus??
Vinu Vijayan, Global Business Development Manager of EOS our partner.
He'll be speaking 26-28 February at the AM for Aerospace and Space conference on Overcoming the challenges of large-scale 3D production of aircraft parts: Insights from EOS on producing Airbus A350 latch shafts

The Aerospace giant Airbus is on its way to mass produce structurally loaded components using AM, for the A350 Aircraft. Airbus Helicopters in Donauwörth is currently collaborating with EOS, a global technology and quality leader for high-end solutions in the field of industrial 3D printing of metals and polymers, to manufacture latch shafts out of titanium powder using EOS M 400-4 industrial 3D printer. These parts will be 45% lighter than the original and will reduce the aircraft’s weight by four kilograms while decreasing the manufacturing cost of the parts.
Further details can be found here.
Ahead of the Additive Manufacturing for Aerospace and Space
conference, Defence IQ had the opportunity to discuss with Vinu
Vijayan, Global Business Development Manager –Aerospace, EOS,
on the challenges associated with supporting Airbus in achieving large
scale AM based production of quality aircraft parts through the whole
process and managing their certification across the supply chain.

DFIQ: EOS has been an enabler to support the project executed by Airbus
Helicopters that will undertake the large scale production of 3D printed latch
shafts for Airbus A350 aircraft. What are the biggest challenges in supporting
your client in achieving large scale production of quality aircraft parts?
VV: In this project, we are talking about flight safety critical parts – so the challenges linked to the reliability of the part manufactured with EOS AM gets substantially larger. Showcasing this level of reliability in part quality, in a statistically repeatable manner is the primary challenge. Furthermore, maintaining the same at a production job level, i.e. manufacturing sufficient number of parts in one job that creates a sustainable business case, enables the AM based
industrialization of such a part. EOS, with its Additive Minds team and the specific project team, has supported the client along these steps in an end-to-end fashion to successfully manufacture flight safety critical parts in a ramped-up, AM-based production set up.

What are the main hurdles in certifying structurally loaded, safety critical aircraft parts? How do you manage certification across the supply chain?
Certification, per se, is the responsibility of the manufacturer, i.e. our clients. EOS provides the distinctive support to such a client to build up the AM know-how as well as the ground work needed to successfully go through the certification process. From that point of view, the key aim during this step is to secure the aviation authority’s confidence in the AM production process: proven repeatability
of the process; investigating and determining the key process parameters and their clear link to the part safety; a methodical and complete risk analysis of all possible failure modes; and the related control plans and so on, to finally freeze a process that creates an airworthy part.

https://additivemanufacturing.iqpc.co.uk/downloads/overcoming-the-challenges-of-large-scale-3d-production-of-aircraft-parts-insights-from-eos-on-producing-airbus-a350-latch-shafts?-ty-m

I can definitely see SGLB inside on this. We've been working with EOS for years now. PR says installs in Germany and United States and Airbus has facilities in both places. Airbus is one of Honeywell's key customers. We all know how long we've been working with Honeywell and remember the presentation with Honeywell https://sigmalabsinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/non-destructive-evaluation-additive-manufacturing.pdf It's always fun to speculate. Guess, We'll know soon enough.