With a goal of boosting the performance of a McLaren 2014 MP4-12C supercar, a team of engineers redesigned components. Finding the component manufacture to be a challenge, metal additive manufacturing (AM) was used to build the parts.

Last year, it seemed as though cannabis-infused drinks were in the offing. Almost everyone (Molson Coors, Anheuser-Busch, etc.) seemed to be getting into the act. Unfortunately, aluminum containers react with the THC to reduce its effectiveness.

Amplify Additive, a Maine metal additive manufacturing start-up, is producing a range of titanium implants using GE Additive Arcam’s Electron Beam Melting (EBM) technology. Arcam’s EBM Q10plus operates under vacuum at elevated temperatures to provide exceptional material properties.

Regional airline operator SkyWest has ordered 20 Embraer E175-E1 jets worth almost $1 billion. SkyWest will operate the new aircraft on behalf of American Airlines’ regional brand American Eagle.

BMW’s largest press shop is the first in which all aluminum-sheet waste is separated and recycled. The challenge is the separation, which collects scrap from 12 different production presses, maintaining the integrity of the different aluminum alloys.

Including our last Ezine, we have occasionally discussed electric-powered and even autonomous flight. One of the challenges this poses is the battery technology. We previously mentioned Uber Air, which is hoping to set up an affordable taxi network.

In a bit of a twist for a personal flight vehicle, the “Big Drone” is being described as a Formula 1 car in the sky because it is designed around the monocoque of an F1 car.

There are several different processes that require a product to flow through a pipe from one piece of equipment to another. A certain level of heat is often required for this process piping, and this heat must be at very high levels for many applications.

Ending years of debate, NASA plans to allow researchers to fly with their payloads on commercial suborbital vehicles for the first time. A draft solicitation was released in late January seeking payloads for NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which provides rides for such payloads on high-altitude balloons, parabolic aircraft flights and commercial suborbital vehicles.

According to this editorial in The Guardian, Britain’s economy is on course to grow by less than 1% in 2019. The writer says that one of the biggest losers from the Brexit debacle is the struggling automotive sector. In fact, he believes that the entire U.K. automotive industry could be wiped out by the end of the 2020s.