Senior Aerospace BWT invests in Stratasys FDM 3D printers to produce aircraft parts for OEMs

Located at the company’s Macclesfield, Cheshire site, Senior Aerospace BWT is equipped with two industrial-grade Stratasys Fortus 450mc 3D printers, and has undertaken a rigorous testing and qualification program of Stratasys’ aerospace-grade Ultem 9085 resin on behalf of its key customers.

Having completed and approved the necessary qualification reports, Senior Aerospace BWT is now fully capable of 3D printing interior aircraft components to meet the needs of aircraft manufacturers.

Darren Butterworth, CEO, Senior Aerospace BWT, commented: “Senior Aerospace BWT is now an industry leader in driving the increased adoption of thermoplastic 3D-printed parts for aircraft, enabling our customers to benefit from the significant benefits that this technology delivers.

“After two years of intensive R&D work, we have qualified the associated products and processes, which enable us to produce flight-ready parts quickly and cost-effectively for our customers. We now have the capability of deploying a robust, accurate, repeatable and traceable process – which is what the industry demands.”

Senior Aerospace BWT is seeing significant savings in terms of component weight, cost and lead-time when using Stratasys FDM-based additive manufacturing in place of traditionally sourced aluminium. For certain parts, savings are as much as 75% – particularly for small order quantities.

“In many cases, minimum order quantities for off-the-shelf aluminium parts make traditional manufacturing simply unviable when we may only need a handful for one aircraft,” Mr Butterworth explained. “If you add to that the small, complex geometries of some parts, it just doesn’t warrant the cost and time to CNC machine them in aluminium.”

Key to the company’s success with additive manufacturing has been Stratasys’ aerospace-grade materials, which helped simplify the qualification and material characterisation process.

With experience in additive manufacturing spanning 10 years, Senior Aerospace BWT first began investigating the commercial viability of Stratasys FDM 3D printing for interior aircraft parts over four years ago. Since then, the company has supplied its customers with hundreds of lightweight, flight-ready interior aircraft parts using FDM, often incorporating highly complex geometries. The company’s success with FDM laid the foundation for the investment in its own in-house capability via Stratasys’ local partner, Tri-Tech 3D.

Stratasys www.stratasys.com

Senior Aerospace BWT https://senioraerospacebwt.co.uk