Materialise to Deliver 3D Printed Flight-Ready Plastic Parts for Airbus

In April of this year, Materialise had obtained EN9100 and EASA 21G certification, authorising the company to deliver airworthy additive manufactured end-use parts. Today, Materialise announced that their certified Factory for 3D printing is now manufacturing plastic parts for the Airbus A350 XWB.

A new generation of aircraft, the A350 XWB offers 25% lower fuel consumption in addition to highest comfort standards for passengers. These improvements reflect Airbus’ focus on meeting the modern requirements of travelers, whose long-range flights are increasing in both frequency and distance. For its newest A350 XWB, Airbus introduced a high level of intelligence through the integration of simple, robust and efficient state-of-the-art systems, which ensure reliability and lower maintenance requirements. With these objectives in mind, it should come as no surprise that certain end-use parts of the A350 XWB are being 3D printed, especially given the benefits that this technology offers in terms of topology optimization and functional integration.

Bart Van der Schueren, Executive Vice President of Production at Materialise stated: “Airbus understands and appreciates the benefits that 3D printing – or more appropriately in this case, Additive Manufacturing (AM) – can bring to the most modern widebody aircraft: the A350 XWB. In addition, with one of the most thorough test programmes developed for a jetliner, the use of AM end-use parts sends a strong signal about the reliability and quality that AM can deliver today.For 25 years, Materialise has been working to improve AM through an ever more sophisticated software offering, and a Factory for 3D Printing that manufactures parts that meet the needs of even the most demanding of industries, including the health care, automotive and aerospace sectors. As such, we are very proud to now be delivering end-use, flight-ready parts to Airbus.”