The days of aerospace assembly lines coming to a standstill because of the absence of a bracket or a panel are coming to a close—not due to the advent of reliable supply chains, but due to Airbus’s and other manufacturers’ redefinition of the procurement rules with regard to certified additive manufacturing on a grand scale.
Ever since the disruption of the global logistics chain in 2019 and the subsequent pandemic, the OEMs have been struggling to meet the demand for flight-critical parts. Airbus, to counter the situation, decided to incorporate the use of 3D printing on a production scale within its production process, thus being able to produce more than 25,000 flight-ready polymer parts per year through the partnership agreement between Airbus and Stratasys. This act not only ensured that the delivery timelines for projects including A320neo, A350, and A400M were streamlined but also proved that the standards required by the aviation industries can indeed be achieved through the use of 3D printing.
The process has started scaled-down, focusing on a spare crew seating part, and has expanded to a massive undertaking of deploying more than 200,000 certified components at sea and around the world. These components are 3D printed using ULTEM 9085 Certified Grade filament and FDM production systems because it is a high-strength, lightweight material that complies with flame, smoke, and toxicity standards. The results are significant as it has led to a 43% weight reduction on 3D-printed components on the A350 aircraft by eliminating minimum quantities and reducing lead times by 85%.
“Stratasys’ additive manufacturing solutions are a fundamental part of our strategy at Airbus, and we believe they represent a critical aspect of safe and sustainable aviation in the future. With additive manufacturing, we can make certified parts in shorter cycles with reduced dependences on supply chains, which is critical from a time and cost-performance basis relative to demanding the needs from our customers globally,” Senac clarified. According to Senac, Stratasys’ additive manufacturing solutions offer critical capabilities to make Airbus carbon neutral by 2050.
These operational advantages go beyond the speed of production. Distributed additive manufacturing also makes it possible for Airbus to produce parts near the point of use, thereby cutting down airplane downtime, as well as the need for storage, and thus overcoming the limitations of traditional supply chains. Rich Garrity, the Chief Business Unit Officer of Stratasys, emphasized the importance of such strategic moves by Airbus and the broader aerospace industry when he said, “With tens of thousands of certified parts already flying, we are seeing an inflection point, not just for Airbus, but for the entire aerospace industry. Demand for lighter, faster, and more resilient supply chains is accelerating the adoption of Stratasys technology worldwide.”
This is in line with the trends that can be gleaned from aerospace additive manufacturing scalability. The “digital warehouse” paradigm, where qualified part designs are archived in an encrypted cloud environment that can produce them at local locations, provides an immunity from geopolitically driven trade obstacles, tariffs, and raw materials bottlenecks. This is because additive manufacturing mitigates inventory and obsolescence challenges.
This ability to scale can also be gathered from other applications of technology in the aerospace sector. The display of the first ever 3D-printed five-meter length of a plane body, which will begin flight tests in 2026, by Saab is one example of the fusion of additive production, AI-aided designs, and MBSE towards speeding up development. It can also be seen in the mounting of a printed part on a production Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft used by the UK Royal Air Force. For Airbus, additive manufacturing as an aviation industry-approved process and procedure today represents not an interim solution but rather an industry-wide paradigm shift concerning the manufacturing and servicing of air transport equipment and other aviation industry products and services. Meanwhile, by capitalizing on scientific breakthroughs with aviation materials and industry-wide validated manufacturing processes, the company is managing to decrease dependence upon vulnerable aviation industry supply chains while optimizing manufacturing efficiency and performance as well.