
A new approach to making airplane parts, minus the infrastructure - chmaynard
http://news.mit.edu/2020/carbon-nanotubes-making-airplane-aerospace-parts-1013
======
zihotki
If it eventually makes into production, this is going to be BIG. It should
drastically reduce cost of manufacture of composite parts. Albeit it seems
like new approach will not be applicable for entusiast use since it requires
custom setup for particular part.

> "Instead of placing layers of material inside an oven to cure, the
> researchers essentially wrapped them in an ultrathin film of carbon
> nanotubes (CNTs). When they applied an electric current to the film, the
> CNTs, like a nanoscale electric blanket, quickly generated heat, causing the
> materials within to cure and fuse together.

With this out-of-oven, or OoO, technique, the team was able to produce
composites as strong as the materials made in conventional airplane
manufacturing ovens, using only 1 percent of the energy."

~~~
jandrese
I hope that isn't a case of "we managed to avoid using a little bit of cheap
energy by the application of a lot of expensive exotic carbon nanotubes."

~~~
philipkglass
The lower energy consumption is a fringe benefit. The main benefit they're
pursuing is drastically reduced equipment size/cost:

 _“If you’re making a primary structure like a fuselage or wing, you need to
build a pressure vessel, or autoclave, the size of a two- or three-story
building, which itself requires time and money to pressurize,” says Brian
Wardle, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. “These things are
massive pieces of infrastructure. Now we can make primary structure materials
without autoclave pressure, so we can get rid of all that infrastructure.”_

~~~
Animats
If you're building a fuselage or wing, you need big infrastructure anyway.
Boeing's composite wing factory is 1.2 million square feet.

