The U.S. Air Force plans to upgrade its aircraft using parts printed on a 3D printer. This will increase the speed of repair, as well as reduce the cost of parts from 8500 to 700 dollars.

The military department explained that they often need to replace a specific part and sometimes it needs to be recreated according to the lost molds, while it must exactly match the original parts. The circulation in these cases is very small - sometimes 2-3 parts are needed, which makes the production long and unprofitable.

According to hightech.fm,, the US Air Force decided to come up with a new approach for repairing aircraft, and this problem concerns the air forces, the fleet of which was mainly created during the Cold War.

Using 3D printing, you can produce many details - from the smallest to the largest. “Now, if we need two or three parts for the B-52,” the U.S. Air Force noted, “we can just pass this on to one of our printers, rather than wait months for us to get them from the factory.” Over the past few weeks, the Air Force has already printed thousands of such parts from metal, plastic, carbon fiber.

“We need to find better ways for our aircraft to work as long as possible,” said Will Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Technology and Logistics. He added that if in the past the replacement of one part cost them an average of $ 8,500, then with the help of 3-D printing the price dropped to $ 700.