What happens when two of the most demanding users of additive manufacturing in aerospace, one building commercial aircraft, the other unmanned defense systems, compare notes in real time?
That’s exactly why we brought Hauke Schultz from Airbus and Steve Fournier from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) together for the very first episode of Additive Talks Season 6. Two organizations. Two sets of constraints. But a surprisingly shared reading of where the industry stands.
The conversation cuts through the noise on a few questions the AM industry tends to sidestep. They include, for instance, What does “factory of the future” really mean once you strip out the marketing? Can distributed additive manufacturing actually respond to aircraft-on-ground situations or is that still largely wishful thinking? And who is genuinely driving the push for AM at scale?
The factory of the future builds on what already exists. It’s the hard work of embedding advanced technologies into organizations that already exist, with existing people, processes, and legacy systems.
Interestingly, Schultz and Fournier share slightly different perspectives on the current state of distributed AM today, particularly for metal parts.
In Europe, “distributed AM” was a popular buzzword a few years ago, especially in aerospace, but priorities have shifted. The idea of widely distributed metal AM remains difficult to achieve, and the real trend is toward centralized production, where economies of scale are possible.
In the USA, however, the narrative differs, particularly in defense, where distributed AM still plays a more active role in discussions about implementation.
That said, on the qualification side, the industry has made real progress, but a smarter approach is emerging: instead of certifying every single part individually, qualifying entire families of similar parts is proving far more efficient for environments with many different parts produced in small quantities.
Watch below for more insights
The main conversation takes place until the 26th minute of the video below, and is followed by several questions from the audience that the experts answered.
