Materialise Reaches New Heights With 3D Printed Parts for Airbus

Materialise (NASDAQ:MTLS), a Belgium-based additive manufacturing company, is reaching new heights through its partnership with Airbus (EPA:AIR).
The company’s share price ended Tuesday up 8.84 percent, at $8, after it announced that its certified factory for 3D printing is beginning to manufacture plastic parts for Airbus’ A350 XWB.

Company overview

Materialise has been involved in 3D printing since the 1990s, when it provided industrial and medical additive manufacturing applications, such as medical image processing, surgical simulations and prototyping and production solutions in biomedical contexts.
Today, the company has a market cap of $352.42 million, and is active across a broad swath of markets, including the healthcare, automotive, art and design and computer products industries.

Partnership with Airbus

Back in April, Materialise obtained EN9100 and EASA 21G certification, gaining authorization to deliver airworthy additive manufactured end-use parts. These end-use parts will help build the A350 XWB, Airbus’ new generation of aircraft that offers a 25-percent reduction in fuel consumption. The aircraft, which is often used for long-range flights, also offers increased comfort for travelers.
3D printing certain plastic components of this aircraft offers clear benefits for Airbus, particularly in regard to topology optimization and functional integration. As Materialise’s executive vice president of production, Bart Van der Schueren, explained in Tuesday’s release, “Airbus understands and appreciates the benefits that 3D printing — or more appropriately in this case, Additive Manufacturing (AM) — can bring to the most modern widebody aircraft: the A350 XWB. In addition, with one of the most thorough test programmes developed for a jetliner, the use of AM end-use parts sends a strong signal about the reliability and quality that AM can deliver today.

Materialise in the 3D printing market

Commenting more broadly, he concluded, “for 25 years, Materialise has been working to improve AM through an ever more sophisticated software offering, and a Factory for 3D Printing that manufactures parts that meet the needs of even the most demanding of industries, including the health care, automotive and aerospace sectors. As such, we are very proud to now be delivering end-use, flight-ready parts to Airbus.”
As the partnership between Materialise and Airbus demonstrates, the 3D printing industry is making great strides in transforming diverse markets. More specifically, the increasing viability of end-use 3D printed products illustrates the importance that 3D printing is taking on in today’s manufacturing industries.
 
Securities Disclosure: I, Morag McGreevey, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.