Saab Flies the First 3D Printed Battle Damage Repair Part and New Technology for Grid Decarbonization: Artificial Intelligence

This Week in Engineering

Swedish airplane maker Saab has tested a new application for 3D printing: aircraft battle damage repair. Using a Gripen jet fighter as a test subject, the company has flown an external access panel 3D printed from an engineering grade of nylon, with good results. The company worked from a part scan, rather than a CAD file and hopes to make the process portable for field use in austere conditions.

Energy is also in the news this week. The World Economic Forum is a bellwether institution for the impact of future technology, and they are reporting that artificial intelligence is the inevitable technology for electric grid decarbonization, as systems move away from large central power plants and towards energy consumers who also generate power. According to the report, what’s lacking is a well understood regulatory framework that will allow millions of electricity generators to use national grids as a form of virtual storage battery. Grid scale storage won’t disappear, but real time load and capacity control is coming, whether the world is ready, or not.

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