- Maria Montero focuses on turning additive manufacturing (AM) into a standard production route for aerospace;<\/li>
- Montero specializes in AM technologies, aiming to improve aircraft sustainability;<\/li>
- She compares her work to a high-tech patisserie, using techniques like laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED) to create components such as a titanium flaperon rib.<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\n\n\n
An infinite fascination for materials<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Her fascination with materials started behind the workbench in the repair shop of her parents\u2019 home, in a small village in the Basque Country in Spain. \u201cMy father and my brothers and sisters were always making repairs or milling parts. As a young girl, I thought everything that my brothers did was interesting, so I spent a lot of hours at the workbench too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That ended up with her starting a bachelor\u2019s in industrial design at Mondragon University when she was eighteen. The Materials course was love at first sight. \u201cI thought straight away: this is it. The first time I started taking a closer look at materials, a whole world opened up for me. All those microstructures, with compositions that determine how a material is going to behave \u2013 for me, it\u2019s a source of infinite fascination. If you look at objects that way, even a table becomes interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three years later, she left for Belgium, where she took a master\u2019s at Leuven and followed it with a doctorate. With a key role for materials in both. She specialises in additive manufacturing. \u201cI was really only supposed to go to Belgium for one year,\u201d says Maria smiling, \u201cbut twelve years later I\u2019m still living in the Benelux.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\u201c<\/em>The first time I started taking a closer look at materials, a whole world opened up for me. It\u2019s a source of infinite fascination.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nMaria Montero-Sistiaga<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n
<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Ellen-Van-Leeuwen.jpg\")
<\/div><\/div>Using data to comply with noise standards and regulations<\/div>In the series \u2018NLR People\u2019, we show you who the experts at the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre are, what drives them, and what they are working on behind the scenes. In this second episode: Ellen van Leeuwen, principal engineer.<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n3D printing: expensive patisserie for aviation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
At NLR\u2019s Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology Centre (MAMTeC<\/a>), Maria is involved in developing AM technologies that will improve aircraft and make them more sustainable. She compares her work to a p\u00e2tissier\u2019s art. \u201cA layer of cream, a layer of pastry, a layer of chocolate, then another layer of pastry\u2026 With 3D printing, we do exactly the same thing. I look not only at the dish\u2019s ingredients \u2013 more or less sugar \u2013 but also the conditions for baking it: the temperature of the oven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This high-tech patisserie can make aviation quite a lot more sustainable. One example of that is laser powder directed energy deposition (LP-DED). In this technique, the material is added using a nozzle \u2013 a tiny pipe \u2013 on a robot arm or multi-axis machine onto the existing surface and then melted by a laser.<\/a> MAMTeC produced a full-size flaperon rib using this technology. A flaperon is a control surface on an aircraft that controls both roll and lift \u2013 a combination flap and aileron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA flaperon rib is large, long and thin: an ideal test case for us,\u201d explains Maria. \u201cLP-DED is very interesting for the production of large, complex components. Production speeds are high and the production is often more economical than other AM technologies. Components such as flaperons are still often milled from solid blocks, which leaves a lot of waste during the production process. The aim of this study for us was to demonstrate the entire production chain for a titanium flaperon rib. I\u2019m proud that we achieved that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/archive.ioplus.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/maria-2.jpg\")
Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) facility<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Challenging work with a lot of variation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
One thing becomes clear time and again during the interview: Maria absolutely loves her work. \u201cMy job is different every day \u2013 I learn new things on a daily basis. AM is a very multifaceted field involving lots of disciplines such as mechanics, statistics, digitalisation and engineering. On top of that, the R&D engineer role means you\u2019re working on both the technology and the large-scale project sides. One minute I\u2019m filling in subsidy applications and the next I\u2019m with my colleagues in the lab. I love that variation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the hype<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
AM is gradually gaining ground within the aviation sector. \u201cWe\u2019re beyond the hype now. Almost all the companies we work with see that 3D printing, for example, has a lot of advantages. The biggest challenge is earning the industry\u2019s confidence. The sector is largely responsible for the certification and quality processes; logically enough, the safety requirements in aerospace are extremely high. Which in turn means that it takes a long time before new technology can be applied.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To speed up that process, Maria is working on behalf of NLR on drawing up new virtual qualification and certification processes for AM. \u201cComponents are currently assessed against a fixed design, fixed parameters and the platform configuration. If we make minor modifications to the design, the entire qualification process has to be started again from scratch. We hope that digitalising and renewing this process will allow it to proceed more quickly in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On top of that, it is important to keep carrying out research and demonstrating that: AM is safe, flexible and more sustainable than traditional production processes. \u201cMy career began at much the same time as the advent of 3D printing for metals. Twelve years ago, almost nobody knew about AM \u2013 totally different from now. I really see it as my mission to turn AM into a standard production route for aviation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/11\/NLR_2023_059_01_preview.jpg\")
<\/div><\/div>Linking technology and tactics for the Defence Department<\/div>In the series \u2018NLR People\u2019, we show you who the experts at the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre are, what drives them. In this fourth episode: Carlina Grispen, military research and development analyst at the Defence Department.<\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rule for every aviation application \u2013 whether it\u2019s new or already existing \u2013 is that it\u2019s got to become lighter, more cost-efficient and less of a burden on the climate. Despite the rise of composites, metals will still be an indispensable feature of new generations of aircraft. There will be a key role in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1744,"featured_media":493242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-partner.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26049],"tags":[57634,48777,79631],"location":[6763],"article_type":[6758],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[],"class_list":["post-465052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobility","tag-aviation-mobility","tag-nlr","tag-nlr-people","location-netherlands","article_type-interview"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"In the series \u2018NLR People\u2019, we show you who the experts at NLR are, and what drives them. In this fifth episode: Maria Montero, R&D engineer at the Aerospace Vehicles Department.","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Aafke Eppinga","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/aafke-eppinga\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/maria.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Mobility<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Mobility<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["aviation mobility<\/a>","NLR<\/a>","NLR People<\/a>"],"unlinked":["aviation mobility<\/span>","NLR<\/span>","NLR People<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 years ago","modified":"Updated 2 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on December 1, 2023","modified":"Updated on December 1, 2023"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on December 1, 2023 6:30 am","modified":"Updated on December 1, 2023 6:30 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=465052"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=465052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}