Here’s an interesting coincidence. After having posted about the 3D printed metal gun today, someone posted a link to the CNS story on the Journal of Nuclear Physics and asked Rossi’s opinion about the chance of 3D printing E-Cats.
Rossi responded:
Italo R.:
You read out thoughts: yesterday in the meeting room of the US factory ot our US Partner we talked about the 3D Printing application for the manufacturing of our reactors. Our model id the work done by Rolls Royce to manufactire their turbines.
Your comment sounds smart.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
The Financial times just published an article by Jeevan Vasagar which discusses Rolls Royce’s plans to start 3D printing parts for their jet engines as a way to speed up production and make lighter parts. In the aerospace industry it can take up to 18 months to receive a part after it is ordered, because of the time it takes to machine it. 3D printing would speed up the lead time involved.
This is encouraging news from Andrea Rossi — 3D printing could be a factor that will help speed up manufacturing and proliferation of the E-Cat, and it sounds like the the team is planning to keep up with the very latest production methods. The E-Cat seems to be a far simpler device than a jet engine, and it could be that 3D printing techniques will become the predominant method of manufacturing the reactors. This could mean a reduction in the number of staff required to produce the cats, and maybe less need for the robots Rossi has often talked about.
UPDATE: This response from Andrea Rossi just came in on the JONP in response to some questions I sent yesterday:
Frank Acland:
We are for now brainstorming about 3D Printing tech. We are studying the case history of Rolls Royce turbines to analyze the possibility of application per analogy to the E-Cat industrial production, obviously limited to specific particulars, like for example particulars of the reactors modules, which can be assimilated to the particulars of a turbine. At the moment we cannot talk about particulars, but if we want to compete with the low cost geopolitic areas and maintain the production in the USA we have to explore all the possible systems to cheap down the production costs. Sooner or later reverse engineering will be made and competition will be born: we must be prepared to the incoming war.
Warm Regards,
A.R.