Will Large Scale 3D printing be used more in defense manufacturing?
Defense contractors prefer to keep the same price tag and same practices forever
>>64882083You're asking the wrong people if you want an actual answer
>>64882083For complex internal structures, yes. But for simpler stuff, no. The usual metalworking techniques, and 3D layup machines for composites, are faster, cheaper and will often lead to a better result, with less restrictions on materials used. For stuff that can't be lost-polymer casted though, yeah, metal and ceramic-ceramic composite 3D printing is already seeing use.
>>64882100This. We're not much for 3d printing or ship hulls for that matter.
>>64882083Probably not. We spent a lot of money on this shit 7 or 8 years ago and learned what the hobbyists already knew - that outside of a few niche applications and (sometimes) rapid prototyping, 3D printing is not great when compared to legacy production methods. I'm going to stop just short of calling it a meme for industrial applications because there are a few things that you can do with it that can't be done any other way, but if you don't need your metal part to have a honeycombed interior for some reason, there are cheaper and faster ways to make that part.>t. public shipyard worker
>>64882277ok boomer
>>64882307Read negro, read. he literally mentioned parts that can't be made any other way were a valid use, Raptor is literally a poster child for that exact thing. There's no point to going 3D printed for parts that can be made with legacy methods though, aside from prototyping and small production runs.
>>64882083No
>>64882083No, 3d printing is for prototyping and extremely complex parts that don't need to be strong. An injection mold can do the same thing but faster and better, at a much larger scale, and less expensively.
>>64882083We can print aircraft carriers with a scaled enough 3d printer but you can't just scale a thing and assume it works when scaled.If 3d printed hulls were brilliant at large scale a commercial yard would be doing it long before a military vessel was so built, because a much larger part of the world's money is spent building civilian hulls than military ones. When we talk basic shipbuilding tech and not radars and railguns, we're talking about the 98% civilian economy and not the 2% military economy. Civilians will pioneer. >>64882307 Case in point>>64882100You only need the one fucking guy and there's always one fucking guy. As a general rule of thumb every actual post on the internet has 100 people who viewed and didn't post. And the one fucking guy whose obsession the thread is about will often be the one who posts because the thread's about his profession. >>64882277 A shipyard worker immediately crawls out the woodwork and I believe him.
It would be nice if there were more parts that could be strengthened by secondary processing like APFSDS sintering, but it seems that there aren't many.
The material control and machinery isn't anywhere near that level yet. It's absolutely a tech that needs to have continued development, and will, but there's just no way to get the strength of something like forged-machined metal working with what is possible today. I may be uninformed and possibly way behind on the tech but to my knowledge the best a "printer" (is laser powder-sintering really 3d printing?) can make are engine conrods.
>>64882083whatabout ROBOFORMING?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCXu8Ju_fdY
>>648820833D metal printers are a wet dream for naval ships to make replacement components from pallets of raw material instead of pallets of spare parts. They are getting there, but I think not quite good enough yet. There are some really cool composite material possibilities that are only possible with 3d printing though. Not sure how well they do at scale or just out of a lab. Something like a boat hull is just retarded and there's no value in printing one compared to normal methods of manufacturing, it's just too big. The gain in 3d printing is really only seen in a smaller scale than a freaking boat hull. But there have been huge gains in rocketry and oddly gun silencers with 3d printing complex shapes that simply can't be made in any other way that are significantly better, more efficient, and lighter. But, for really really big shit, it's just not there>>64882144And this anon gets it
>>64882307That picture is not the own that you think. You should read a bit more about those engines, and then re-read what I wrote.>>64882418You shouldn't believe strangers on the internet. That having been said, a number of years back I was getting a technology demonstration tour at a place that I probably shouldn't discuss here and a tech was showing me one of their machines that could print titanium. When I asked him for a hypothetical use case (the demonstration was to get my yard interested in using their capabilities), he explained that if a valve handle broke on a ship somewhere the manufacturer would require a minimum order of 50 or something like that, possibly with a long lead time. He could make it in a day, although it would cost a few thousand dollars. I told him that I could get a spare one off of a mothballed ship in an hour for free. He admitted that that was probably the way to go, and that aside from a few test runs they hadn't actually used the thing. When I asked him why they'd spent half a million dollars on a machine that they weren't using, he shrugged and mentioned that it was the end of the fiscal year, and they had to spend it on something.I wish that I had that sort of budget, but they're quite the facility. That was before COVID though. They may have found a use for it since then.
>>648825153d printing as a form of manufacturing is still getting there. It is fucking terrible at mass production and honestly all advances still have massive issues with producing many copies of one thing quickly. Most companies have dropped 3d printing or gone only into the metal and composite kinds. The war in Ukraine has been interesting for it as the Ukrainians have been using 3d printers to convert stuff like old artillery shells into drone dropped munitions and printing drones, but that has more to do with them just not having the industry to make those sorts of things. That being said I love my 3d printer, but only because I know CAD and will just design and then print what I want most of the time. Pretty sure most of hobbyist market is piracy and IP infringement though.
What's the point through? The hull is like the easiest and cheapest part of a warship. It's the internal systems, the weapons, crew and other such shit (even the plumbing, wiring, power plant, etc) which costs a ton.
>>64882083No, they're slow and the materials involved are generally more expensive than raw materials for other methods. They also produce weaker final products even at smaller scales.>>64882277It has valid industrial uses but it just sucks for large scale production of really anything and making existing products with it is often pretty silly because those products were designed to be optimised for other production methods.>>64882515>he explained that if a valve handle broke on a ship somewhere the manufacturer would require a minimum order of 50 or something like that, possibly with a long lead timeThis is pretty much the industrial application of a printer in naval terms at the moment. Ships are old and pretty often you either have a ridiculous MOQ, lead time or even sometimes the part just isn't produced anymore. If you can't steal it off another ship (which is reality for a lot of nations without big mothball fleets) it's valid. But you could also just machine something.>>64882545>3d printers to convert stuffThe thing is you could do this with other methods and probably more efficiently for mass production. What makes cheap little FDM printers so great in this scenario is low cost and ability to be distributed widely and lack of need for supporting infrastructure. But these things only really matter if you're in a war, not if you're in a big factory that isn't at risk of Shaheds crashing through the roof.
In this age of 3DCAD, is even the practice of creating mockups and examining various aspects already outdated?
>>64882906No, there's a lot of things you can't test with just the CAD model. You can run sims, but you still need to validate them at the end of the day, and some things can't be simmed. Also, finger fucking the thing often does fire off neurons that didn't fire when just staring at the thing on a screen.
>>64882515>he explained that if a valve handle broke on a ship somewhere the manufacturer would require a minimum order of 50 or something like that, possibly with a long lead time. He could make it in a day, although it would cost a few thousand dollars. I told him that I could get a spare one off of a mothballed ship in an hour for free.I think that the main draw for that kind of use case would be for isolated facilities in areas with tenuous access to supply lines. In an extreme example, imagine a hypothetical outpost on the moon or mars. Being able to use 3D printed components can cut down on the amount of spare parts that you need to keep in inventory. A smaller supply of materials for the printer can replace a catalog of components.
Surprisingly, many ships have facilities for supplying consumable parts.
Well in aerospace 3d printing is now widely used because precision is difficult in assembly lines. But where mass production is big, no, everyone will use an assembly line, robotics but not 3d printing. And in many cases materials just aren't compatible with 3d printing.
>>64882083>Will Large Scale 3D printing be used more in defense manufacturing?Of course but why use hulls as an example when it's about the stupidest thing you could choose to print? There is no advantage using additive manufacture for something that can be made of sheet metal.
>>64882906Nope, whatever you are building needs to interact with humans at some point and havng a physical thing for humans to interact with is the best way to test that.
>>64882083Eh...probably not for everything. You might see some 3D printed components, tho. >>64882100This. You're lucky if you don't get troll answer.
>>64883597Specialized mountings for weird hull/strut angles?
>>64883236Every ship has a tenuous supply line and a particular part might be a week away
>>64882479What does this do that a 50 ton press can't do in 1/100th the time and for 1/100th the investment?
>>64883918Overhangs but it's an edge case, they are mainly for low production runs where you don't want to drop half a mil on tooling.I can see these getting use by boutique car manufacturers to produce panels for 100 car runs.
>>64883918If you didn't watch the video that is not steel, it's titanium. As far as I'm aware you can't just squash it with a press, but I could be wrong.
>>64883236https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/3d-printing-saving-weight-and-space-at-launch/https://www.space.com/astronauts-3d-print-first-metal-part-on-iss
>>64882868>large scale productionI assume you mean size, because naval hull output is well within the numbers where printing would outweight dies. But neither of that matters, since ship hulls are welded from steel ran through massive forming presses, and in some sections just flat sheet.
>>64882906Eat shit and shut the fuck up, engineering puke. Men are speaking.
>>64882083Explosive welding and forming. I don't care if it is less efficient, and difficult to guara tee satisfactory results; it is cool and that will animate the machine spirit and grant luck.
>>64884403>https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/iss-research/3d-printing-saving-weight-and-space-at-launch/>article about concepts and fucking around with 3d printing IN SPAAAAAAAAACE>no mention of actual realized weight savingsJFC I hate clickbait. That having been said, when it costs upward of $1000 per lb. to get something into orbit, the idea of printing a tool out of filament, then turning the tool back into filament makes a certain amount of sense. Down here on planet Earth though (where the vast majority of production takes place, both defense related and otherwise), it's simply a slower way to make a more expensive tool and generally lower quality tool. I'd classify this with my earlier assessment of hobby use, rapid prototyping, and niche applications.
>>64882906Why do you make this assertion?CAD merely designs the geometry, the step one after having an idea. The behavior using the geometry like the strains and movement given forces has to be analysed by mathematical model (simulation) and prototyped by physical model (test), which ever cost the least for the most fidelity and truthfulness for the stage, and each successful stage ramp up the standard and budget. Eventual goal is to produce physical objects in high volume for mad bucks for years. Perfect FEA cannot rule out the false premise given to it and FEA by itself cannot test its own logic.
>>64883961Pretty sure you can, but it's a bit harder than with steel. There's some alchemy and the occasional blood sacrifice involved.
>>64882083I sure want to see the price of small boats going down, hell I would love to have money to setup a operation and start making cheaper boats for the small guy.Making rich people stuff affordable for poor people is always a gigantic market
>>64884416I mean either high quantity or just large parts.I'm doing a Uni project on this topic (well a tangentially related one involving printing) at the moment. The tl;dr from most papers is that below 50 units (we are talking for small parts here) 3D printers offer a lower per unit cost than injection moulding or similar. I can't remember the exact numbers for SLS metal vs CNC machining but I think it was similar. CNC costs rapidly drop with multiple parts whilst SLS is pretty much constant per unit cost no matter how many you make (since the cost is 90% materials rather than jigs, tooling, machine operation etc).For larger stuff most of the cost of 3D printing is materials. Ship production is already an extremely mature process and it's one of those situations where because it's so big 3D printing actually takes similar time to making it normally except with much worse physical properties (3D printing via any method is pretty much always weaker than normal methods) and expensive materials/finnicky tooling.>>64883236This is effectively the use of printing in naval industry. Stuff breaks on ships all the time and half the time it's made by a company that hasn't existed for decades. >>64883432It's not about replacing anything but complementing it. Things like seals (except gaskets) can't be manufactured easily with the workshops and if something like a pump gets clogged and breaks the parts inside aren't always convenient geometries.>>64883743You can just do this with sheet metal fabrication 99% of the time.>>648861513D printing doesn't make it more affordable. To make anything cheap you have to make a lot of it generally, rotational molding for example is used on some small boats.
