Engineering students from the University of Virginia posted a YouTube video of a plastic turbofan engine they had designed and built using 3D printing technology.
Executives at Mitre Corporation, a McLean-based defence contractor, saw the video and sent an announcement to the School of Engineering and Applied Science that they were looking for two summer interns to work on a new project involving 3D printing.
Only one student, Steven Easter, then a third-year mechanical engineering major, responded to the job announcement.
Easter got the assignment to build over the summer an unmanned aerial vehicle, using 3D printing technology. In other words, a plastic plane, to be designed, fabricated, built and test-flown.
The engineers worked with inputs from their adviser, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor David Sheffler, a University of Virginia Engineering School alumnus and 20-year veteran of the aerospace industry.
It was a daunting project - producing a plane with a 6.5-foot wingspan, made from assembled "printed" parts. The students sometimes put in 80-hour workweeks, with many long nights in the lab, according to a university statement.
"It was sort of a seat-of-the-pants thing at first - wham, bang. But we kept banging away and became more confident as we kept designing and printing out new parts," Easter said.
Sheffler said he had confidence in them "the entire way." The way eventually led to assembly of the plane and four test flights in August and early September at Milton Airfield near Keswick. It achieved a cruising speed of 72.4 kph and is only the third 3-D printed plane known to have been built and flown.
During the first test, the plane's nosepiece was damaged while the plane taxied around the field.
"We dogged it, but we printed a new nose," Easter said in a statement.
That ability to make and modify new parts is the beauty of 3D printing, said Sheffler, who works with students in the Engineering School's Rapid Prototyping Lab.
Their task now is to build an improved plane-lighter, stronger, faster and more easily assembled. The project also is their fourth-year thesis.
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