Divergent Technologies and Saab have delivered the initial fuselages for a Saab future product concept of an autonomous aircraft.

The fuselage, which was jointly designed and manufactured by the two companies, was created with no unique tooling or fixturing. It was built using Divergent's fully digital, software-defined manufacturing assets, with development carried out through the Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS). This end-to-end platform combines AI-driven structural design, industrial-rate additive manufacturing and universal robotic assembly.

The resulting structure stretched 15 feet in length and comprised 26 unique printed parts, which were joined and bonded in a fixtureless robotic assembly cell. It is expected to be one of the largest laser powder bed fusion structures ever to undergo powered flight.

“This collaboration with Saab highlights what becomes possible when ambitious aircraft concepts are paired with an end-to-end, software-defined manufacturing platform” says Lukas Czinger, Co-founder and CEO of Divergent. “By tightly integrating digital design, additive manufacturing and automated assembly, our teams were able to realise a large-scale fuselage structure aligned with Saab’s vision, while moving with a level of speed, flexibility and structural integration that traditional approaches cannot match.”

“Adopting Divergent's additively manufactured and digitally designed structures in this effort has given our joint team unparalleled flexibility in this development process” says Axel Bååthe, head of Saab's Rainforest. “We see digital design and advanced manufacturing as a key enabler of our collaborative success in this project.”