Additive manufacturing really seems to be taking off these days.

Aurora Flight Sciences has collaborated with Stratasys Inc. to create – and fly – an aircraft with a 62-inch wingspan, built using additive manufacturing. The one-piece model was unveiled at the announcement of the new National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) in Youngstown, Ohio.

The concept additive manufacturing is certainly a futuristic one. Effectively, the process takes a digital model and builds a 3D version of it using a layering process.

“The success of this wing has shown that 3D printing can be used to rapidly fabricate the structure of a small airplane,” said Dan Campbell, Structures Research Engineer at Aurora.

“If a wing replacement is necessary, we simply click print and within a couple days we have a new wing ready to fly.”

While the aircraft was clearly too small for most practical applications, the fact it was built using 3D printing could have massive implications for the future of the aerospace and manufacturing industries.

“In the aerospace industry, additive manufacturing has the benefits of reducing material usage, doing away with tooling, reducing part count, and simplifying assembly,” said Bill Macy, Application Development Lead at Stratasys.

“These benefits allow the manufacture of a low quantity of products at lower cost, in less time, with competitive performance”.

The development of additive manufacturing has been a goal of the Obama administration in the hopes that it revitalizes the manufacturing industry.

The event was attended by United States Senator Sherrod Brown and United States Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio.

Aurora is headquartered in Manassas, VA and designs and builds aerospace vehicles for commercial and military applications.