Courtesy Airliners

Next: the whole plane

Rapid prototyping, or 3-D printing, has been used to create all kinds of amazing objects in a variety of media, but a team working under EADS in the UK wants to print something heretofore unheard of: the entire wing of an airliner. Working at the same facility where Concordes were once built, researchers there are already printing landing gear brackets and other aircraft components in hopes that one day they’ll be able to print out many of the critical parts for an entire aircraft.

This is chiefly due to developments that allow modern 3-D printers to turn out finished objects in media ranging from the high-grade titanium alloys necessary for aircraft construction to glass, plastics, concrete, and even frosting.

It’s also within the realm of possibility that the company could build an entire aircraft–piece by piece–in one place, sidestepping some of the supply-chain problems that have delayed the Airbus A380.

Experts in the field now say 20 percent of the output of the world’s 3-D printers is final products, and that’s expected to rise to 50 percent by 2020. In other words, people are prototyping and manufacturing on the same machines.

If you could print an airline wing that can stand up to wind-tunnel tests, you could print just about anything. 3-D printing lowers the cost of entry into manufacturing for any number of enterprises.

If EADS is already printing aircraft components, the automakers are likely to get on board. New for 2035, the printed Corvette.