UAMMI, ElectraFly to make 3D-printed UAM aircraft parts

The Utah Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Initiative (UAMMI, Kaysville, Utah, U.S.) and ElectraFly (Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.), an aviation company building personal flying vehicles, have announced a partnership to create 3D-printed carbon fiber aircraft parts for the urban air mobility (UAM) market.

Under a contract from America Makes, for the last two years UAMMI has been using an Impossible Objects (Northbrook, Ill., U.S.) composite-based additive manufacturing (CBAM) 3D printer to fabricate legacy aircraft parts for the U.S. Air Force. The CBAM technology is a novel additive process that uses carbon fiber sheets and thermoplastic materials to produce carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) components under heat and pressure in a similar manner to compression molding. The resulting CFRP parts are said to be half the weight of aluminum but have comparable strength to weight ratios.

Building on the success of the Air Force project, UAMMI will now use the CBAM technology to begin printing parts for ElectraFly. ElectraFly is an aviation company designing and building single person, hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) multicopters.

“The market for urban air mobility aircraft, which is on-demand urban transportation aircraft carrying from 1 to 8 passengers, is forecasted to be 430,000 vehicles over the next twenty years,” says Dr. Tulinda Larsen, Executive Director for UAMMI. “Using lightweight 3D-printed advanced materials will be essential to meet the manufacturing requirements for this emerging industry.”

“There is an undeniable movement happening in air transportation, but there are problems in efficiency. Teaming with UAMMI to transition our complex metal parts to lightweight 3D printed composite parts will support our innovations and help expand our operations here in Utah,” says John Manning, co-founder of ElectraFly.

“The CBAM printer is ideal for manufacturing parts for Urban Air Mobility aircraft because the technology of layering composites ensures strong, lightweight composite parts and the digital agility of building different part families on-demand,” says Jeff DeGrange, chief commercial officer at Impossible Objects. “We are thrilled that UAMMI and ElectraFly wil be using this technology to manufacture parts for their new innovative UAM vehicle and are excited to see the results,” he added.

The UAMMI and ElectraFly team will begin working on the project immediately with their first objective to replace the vehicles metal gears with composite fabricated parts. Additional parts will be be added to the program and manufactured over time.