3D PRINTING TO SUPPORT EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITIES: LESSONS LEARNED FROM RAPID PROTOTYPING OF AN ELECTROMECHANICAL ACTUATOR GEARBOX

Additive manufacturing has been gaining widespread diffusion in the last few years, thanks to the availability of inexpensive desktop 3D printers based on Fused Filament Forming (FFF) and Stereolytography (SLA) technologies. Both in academic and industrial contexts, this technology can efficiently support the setup of laboratory activities, significantly reducing costs and time associated with the development of experimental test benches. For example, the design and manufacturing of custom fixtures and mock-ups can be significantly sped up, taking advantage of the unprecedented flexibility of desktop additive manufacturing machines. This work summarizes the use of FFF 3D printing for the development of a test bench intended to characterize the behaviour of an electromechanical actuator for aircraft flight controls. FFF 3D printing allowed to quickly manufacture a functional prototype of the actuators’ main reduction gearbox. This complex assembly is one of the most critical components of an electromechanical servosystem, as it performances, in terms of efficiency, gear ratio, and reliability, dramatically influence the overall behaviour of the actuator.