**4.2 Pioneering bionic 3D printing**

There is an innovative advancement that mimics the living organism's organic cellular structure and bone growth. The world's largest 3D-printed airplane cabin

**Figure 3.** *3D-printed Diatoms in the PLA matrix (original work).*

**Figure 4.** *3D-printed titanium firefighting drone [23].*

component with a "bionic partition" which separates the passenger cabin from the galley has been divulged by Autodesk and Airbus. This design has made the partition very light with a 45% reduction in weight compared to traditional designs but still very strong. It has been estimated that this design would save 465,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. This new bionic partition used the second-generation alloy of scandium, aluminum, and magnesium named "Scalmalloy" created by the 3D-printing expertise of Airbus subsidiary "APWorks" (**Figure 5**) [24].

Similarly, Airbus has collaborated with Materialise to produce the 3D-printed bionic spacer panel using FDM and Materialise's post-production processes which made the panel 15% light in weight compared to traditional panels (**Figure 6**) [25, 26].

Stratasys has been 3D printing more Airbus cabin components for years now [27]. Airbus A350 XWB was decided to be manufactured by 3D printing (**Figure 7**) [28].
