Adept Airmotive flies high with Inventor of the month award

Adept Airmotive used Autodesk Inventor engineering design software to develop its revolutionary 320T – a compact 320-horsepower general aviation engine that offers low vibration and high structural integrity. The 280lb. engine is lighter than a comparable piston engine, providing significant fuel efficiencies. Richard Schulz, managing director of Adept Airmotive, says that harnessing the digital prototyping capabilities of Inventor enabled the company to produce accurate 3D models of the 320T before building anything. That reduced the number of physical prototypes, while processes that once took hours (such as changing the wall thickness of an engine component) were completed almost instantaneously. “Digital prototyping was absolutely critical because it allowed us to bring a single digital model through every phase of design and development,” says Schulz. “We were able to explore the form, fit and function of our designs, without expending time and resources on physical prototypes.” This kind of optimisation, he says, allowed Adept to minimise potentially expensive downstream changes by catching errors before they reached manufacturing. As a result, the company was able to produce a working prototype, paving the way for the introduction of a new generation of modern general aviation engines. The Inventor of the Month program recognises the most innovative design and engineering advancements made using Autodesk Inventor software.