[INTERVIEW] Scott Sevcik, AM Craft: “Great Alternative” for Additive Manufacturing

“AM Craft’s focus is aviation as a service bureau,” explains Scott Sevcik, Vice President of Technique and Enterprise Improvement at AM Craft. Sevcik’s background features a diploma in aerospace engineering and a decade at Lockheed Martin earlier than transitioning to Stratasys. There, he was pivotal of their verticalization technique, aligning additive manufacturing options with demanding industries, together with aerospace. His journey with AM Craft started as an advisor, stemming from a relationship established when AM Craft’s founders, had been Stratasys resellers within the Baltic area.

Spearheading efforts from Minneapolis for the Riga-headquartered firm, Sevcik is concentrated on a worldwide technique. AM Craft addresses the particular wants of airways and upkeep, restore, and overhaul (MRO) operators by leveraging additive manufacturing (AM) to streamline provide chains and supply fast, low-volume elements manufacturing.

AM Craft’s enterprise mannequin includes acquiring aviation provider certifications, permitting airways and MROs to buy elements with out the burden of producing and certification processes. This technique faucets right into a market with important pent-up demand for the advantages of additive manufacturing, resembling cost-efficiency and speedy half availability.

Sevcik famous that the corporate is ramping up, just lately saying a fundraising spherical they accomplished late final 12 months. “This chance is making an attempt to do all the pieces we did at Stratasys to advance FDM to make it extra manufacturing related,” he remarked, illustrating how AM Craft is poised to bridge gaps that conventional additive manufacturing approaches have struggled to handle.

Be taught extra concerning the Additive Manufacturing Benefit: Aerospace, Area & Protection, at our free on-line occasion on July sixteenth. 

Harnessing the potential of additive manufacturing within the aerospace trade

The aerospace trade is getting ready to a big enlargement in using additive manufacturing, at the very least that’s the way it seems to plenty of these interviewed in our sequence taking a look at 3D printing in Aerospace, Area, and Protection. Sevcik displays on the sector’s evolution: “We’re 10 years into that in a single day success,” he remarked, underscoring the in depth groundwork that has introduced the trade to its present state. May this be known as a tipping level? Regardless of early skepticism, strides in certification and course of improvement are setting the stage for broader adoption. 

Sevcik emphasizes that the maturation of AM know-how, significantly inside aviation, has required endurance. Early steerage from trade giants like Boeing within the 2000s laid the muse for the technological developments and materials developments essential for AM to attain its present standing. “It took plenty of phases of creating the groundwork, industrializing or maturing these applied sciences to a degree of repeatability that’s applicable,” he defined.

A key driver on this adoption is the combination of AM into current provide chains, particularly as corporations search options to pandemic-induced disruptions, and provide chains obtain elevated consideration when it comes to nationwide safety. “We’re completely benefiting from a number of years of form of nightmarish provide chain disruptions,” Sevcik famous. 

The trade’s narrative has additionally shifted, transferring away from the rhetoric of disruption in direction of integration. The hyperbolic time period disruption, itself usually a long-derided misuse of disruptive innovation, has lengthy fallen by the wayside “Nobody in an aviation provide chain desires disruption,” says Sevcik. As an alternative, AM is now seen as a technique to improve provide chains by filling gaps moderately than changing current buildings.

Trying forward, Sevcik highlights that plane inside parts stay a focus. Stratasys’ work with Airbus on behind-the-wall parts has now expanded to extra seen, beauty elements inside cabins. “We nonetheless see an amazing alternative for development throughout the cabin,” he asserted, noting the potential for thousands and thousands extra printed elements.

Developments in supplies are additionally propelling the trade ahead. Stratasys’ launch of Antero, a PEKK-based materials appropriate for publicity to oils and fuels, exemplifies the enlargement into semi-critical elements exterior the cabin. Sevcik is equally enthusiastic about different AM applied sciences, resembling DLP and sustainable powder mattress supplies like Nylon 11. “There’s going to be extra alternative that matches properly with the necessity for sustainability general throughout the aerospace trade,” he concluded.

The development of additive manufacturing in aerospace: classes from composites

The adoption of additive manufacturing in aerospace is progressively evolving, with parallels drawn to the trajectory of composite supplies in earlier a long time. Sevcik in contrast the development of AM to composites, noting that the preliminary introduction of composites within the A380, in service 2007, noticed 10% integration, which surged to over 50% in later fashions just like the Boeing 787, 2011, and Airbus A350, 2015. “We’re now not speaking about one half two-part eventualities, however a whole bunch of elements going into each plane,” Sevcik defined, indicating the potential for AM development.

Presently, AM utilization in aerospace is minimal, possible lower than 1% of plane parts. Nonetheless, this determine is predicted to rise initially into single digits within the subsequent few years and probably double digits by the last decade’s finish. A big driver is the retrofit market, the place plane bear full cabin refurbishments each six to seven years. The A350, the place manufacturing started in 2010, is now coming into its retrofit section, creating substantial alternatives for AM.

“Additive manufacturing is completely suited to resolve issues resembling provide chain disruptions and the necessity for small portions of distinctive elements,” Sevcik famous. The retrofit market highlights AM’s benefits, together with speedy manufacturing and customization. Moreover, profitable integration in retrofits can affect unique tools producers (OEMs) to include AM elements from the outset in future plane designs.

The regulatory panorama stays difficult. AM Craft’s current Half 21G certification from the European Aviation Security Authority (EASA) exemplifies the rigorous course of concerned. “It requires a relationship and dealing intently with an airworthiness authority,” Sevcik stated, emphasizing the significance of endurance and diligence in assembly trade requirements. This certification course of, which took a couple of 12 months, concerned in depth documentation and course of audits to make sure compliance and construct belief.

Guaranteeing repeatability and traceability in AM elements is essential. Sevcik highlighted that AM Craft leverages Stratasys know-how, which gives the mandatory certification and course of documentation. “We had been in a position to leverage all the pieces achieved on the OEM to indicate these bins might be checked,” he acknowledged. The corporate goals to broaden its know-how portfolio as different OEMs reveal the maturity and functionality of their processes.

The human aspect stays a big hurdle. Skilled engineers should achieve confidence in AM, and academic efforts are important. “We lastly get, you understand, 10-year skilled engineers that did additive in class,” Sevcik famous, underscoring the generational shift wanted for broader adoption. In the meantime, software program instruments should evolve to facilitate AM design, addressing a essential hole within the present ecosystem.

The potential additive manufacturing in aerospace is nowhere close to absolutely realized, nevertheless, the mixture of regulatory developments, technological maturity, and market demand, significantly in retrofits, indicators a promising trajectory for the trade.

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