responsible. the hamburg district of finn can vadra is home to an air bus factory. the head of the company's emerging technologies department is made. his team uses 3 d. printed prototypes to help improve components. the idea too of having all that of inverters put inside the competitive manufacturing definitely has the potential to change the entire value chain and we can do production on site redesign processes and print on demand we can develop completely new products for next generation aircraft because this is where air bus assembles it's a 350 passenger jets a key component is now being printed in quantity the door locking shelf to. their due to fly in the aircraft later this year. or division. this component usually consists of 10 parts but the airbus version has just one of them

so we've been to graded several functions and reduced the weight of there are 2 of these parts per dollar and they make the aircraft lighter by 4 kilograms that's a lot in the aviation world they've got it cuts down on fuel consumption and c o 2 emissions so. over the 30 year lifespan of an aircraft one less kilogram of weight will save half a 1000000 liters of fuel the a $350.00 actually has a loss of 3 d. printed parts. $16.00. 20 brackets for the crew cabin compartment. and more than 1000 plastic parts in panels ventilation systems and electronics gear air buses even testing prototypes of electrical parts. 3 d. printing is typically used to build grid stretches like this cabin partition wall the printed version. news is less material and so is lighter than previous models

their lines are always trying to reduce the weight of their planes to say fuel but air bus believes the 3 g. process could be even more efficient doesn't some of. this is the largest component that we can make right now we'd like to build bigger ones it took us a total of 900 hours to produce a complete partition wall and 7 construction chambers that means we had to start up a printer 7 times to produce the $116.00 parts we. were not that involved i looked at. 900 hours of printing time for just one wall that's a lot of work in future the hope is to print a mold and then cast it again and again right now conventional mass production methods can still produce components like this more quickly and cheaply than 3 d. can. but that could soon change. the form next additive manufacturing trade fair in frankfurt there are some

sophisticated examples of 3 d. technology here like this model of a human body printed in one go. klaus am a man advises companies on which 3 d. production methods might work best for them he says that more and more businesses are making the transition to the technology. would be used to think the automotive industry is now starting to design 3 components for their vehicles so i guess that's good for the environment or northerners because those parts will be produced only on demand and they can be made using powder which can be delivered locally and printed out anywhere in the world where they're needed . for example these lightweight brake pedals were made by 3 d. printers and produce to send a cool factory that cuts down on waste and emissions. we

typically save 6 tons of c o 2 emissions per kilo come paired to conventional methods in this your this facility in the state of lower saxony will be able to print 3 g. component parts out of alinea i'm fully automatically this technology could encourage companies to keep their production facilities in germany instead of exporting them overseas when. they occur and yes it's a little we can bring those factories back to germany provided that they're fully automated. and if we can do that will increase the economic value of german companies born in those a lot. but traditional mass production is still unbeatable a cheap particularly in asia 3 d. printing will have to bring something else to the table like printing several components at once such innovations could enhance the competitive profile of german

companies. 3 d. printing is already well known for its ability to produce complex prototypes. the motorcycle designed and built by big rep was finished in time for the expo but company executives say that they'll have to do a better job of giving customers what they want. we all know that for 30 years think about it 30 years there's been a promise made to the industrial customers out there what 3 d. printing can do for them we were talking about speed are we fast enough and printing we're talking about precision is that what's coming out of the machine really what we want is a repeat of 0 are we getting the same part over and over again this is what the customer of the industrial customer wants and i think we all agree there's been great disappointment around them that we're going to change today thanks to some applications many kinds of 3 d.

printing a still teams to get a precise answer to expensive but improvements are underway. to new big rep printers work up to 10 times faster than the old ones printing speed is the key to making 3 d. technology more profitable. and carbon fiber materials can make the printouts rable in fact a u.s. firm called carbon based near san francisco has teamed up with addie das to make soles for. id das is a pioneer in the use of technology and its products. the k. founder and chairman as carbons board. invented a process to tell aus for the mass production of custom made component. companies partnership with added it's a big step forward no one's ever taking 3 d. printing to high volume adidas represented

a seminal moment i would are. you in the history of the industry where we've got volumes that now allows to have a cost down her. just like injection molding. this process could present a cost effective alternative to conventional mass production methods 2 years ago it took more than 2 hours to print a shoe soles like this one now it takes just 30 minutes. this will allow the 3 d. printing world to go from a 10000000000 dollar prototyping world to a 300000000000 dollar manufacturing job or not so far that's just a vision the great struck share of the 3 d. shoes so cannot yet be fully customized and production will not be relocated to germany where us is based the printed so's the ships to factories in asia where the shoes are assembled. so right now this is not a particularly sustainable production model but that could change in future.

digital sustainability that's a combination of things one is the materials ation the other one is mitigating supply chains right and having parts on demand or local for local production but it goes well beyond that we've had some breakthroughs now where we can get into buy a base feedstocks. compensate still mainly print with polymer resin to petroleum the light sensitive materials enable the company to make products with complex grid structures that to mold lightweight but it's also working on ways to make the product the stain of. it is going to do it all polyurethane show they've set targets out in the next 10 years or less to have shoes that are recycled and we have the ability to deliver here at the frankfurt trade fair such visions 3 d.

printing sounds like a welcome development. meant. but how likely are they to be realized. connor missed or. kept a call about promise for 3. dozen of these are mainly visions or hopes for the future but at this point there's not much evidence that more sustainability is really being achieved. pet show works at the institute for ecological economic research in berlin the institute is demister d. on whether immobile phone case printed at home in germany is more environmentally friendly than one the mass produced in asia and found out that they're about the same. that's because the lower c o 2 emissions from local 3 d. printing are offset by the high energy consumption of the printing machines.

this process is neither particularly sustainable nor economical but it can be profitable for some companies under certain conditions you want to name companies can generally make money on expensive 3 d. printing projects only if they can speed up or streamline production still they'll use fewer materials and some products could be recycled even if that custom made. we've come to the reflow recycling company in amsterdam to find out whether 3 d. printing production really is sustainable about 80 percent of printed products i'm a different last ink there'd be a fraction of them are recyclable or biodegradable this machine a reflow 10 discarded plastic bottles into plastic filament that can be used for printing the granules come from p.t. bottles the material is suitable for 3 d. printing and it's cheap. filaments from reflow we use to build the walls of

a shop in london that sells fashions made from recyclable materials sustainability is often good for business but not everyone is willing to pay more for these products so reflow sells its recycled filaments at the same price as its competitors whose products are less the stain of. industry is interesting because they see that consumers are asking for it right in big macroeconomic friend. and industry this was just a follow up for example reflow supplies 3 d. materials to a company that makes sun glasses this would replace an entire block of raw plastic from which the frames and normally melt that cut down on plastic waste. recycling technology is already being used in several other countries. in india plastic bottles picked up from garbage dumps can be converted into plastic

filaments for 3 d. printing and those who collect the bottles and some extra income. this technology can help to enhance local value added cycle all over the world converting guarded plastic. products. this 3 d. printing industry is expanding rapidly and growing ever faster and more efficient but it will be some time before we see the promise improvement like short supply chain reduction in the production the elimination of warehouses for better parts and the use of recyclable materials in closed loop systems all that will require a lot of new investment.

boom boom boom boom. boom boom boom boom. boom boom boom. boom. boom. more. the number of corona infections is rising. marj groups of people are listening keeping minister in distance often seems impossible odds are researching say it can be done. by the flow of the dance trance. could this help reduce the spread of the virus to morrow to doing.

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