At the Dubai Air Show in November 2015, US UAV manufacturer AuroraFlightSciences and 3D printing company Stratasys jointly launched the world's first 3D printed jet drone with a speed of 241km/h. Its appearance also means that the technology of human 3D printing has taken another step. This high-speed drone has a wingspan of 3 meters and weighs 15 kilograms. It was designed by Aurora and produced by Stratasys. It is understood that 80% of the components of the 3D printing drone are manufactured by means of fused deposition modeling (FDM), the body is printed with nylon material, the engine exhaust pipe is made of metal, and the heat resistance is good.

3D printing drone

3D printing technology has already begun to appear in the field of drone production. Taking full advantage of the advantages of 3D printing technology and avoiding its risks as much as possible will become a top priority. This article will use this as a starting point to analyze its role in the field of UAV production from the advantages and disadvantages of 3D printing technology.

3D printing technology for the four major advantages of the drone industry

Timeliness

3D printing technology is widely used in the design of the prototype in the field of drones, and the prototype can be produced quickly and at low cost.

UAV design requires multiple iterations, and traditional machining and assembly processes will consume a lot of manpower, resources, and time in such iterative iterations. The 3D printing technology, which does not need to open the mold, greatly shortens the iteration cycle, can quickly manufacture and verify the prototype, accelerates the time interval from design to actual use, and improves the efficiency of the enterprise. The validated prototype can also be used for display, which greatly speeds up the time-to-market of the product and thus enhances the competitiveness of the enterprise.

In 2012, the University of Virginia developed a third 3D printing aircraft, team engineer David Schafer said: "It used to be two years to design a plastic turbofan engine, costing about $250,000. But using 3D technology, The design and construction of the aircraft took only four months and cost about $2,000. The shortening of the production cycle is obvious.

2. Economics

The 3D printing "addition" production method has no cutting, grinding, corrosion, etc.; the "subtraction" process realizes the raw material "how much is needed", greatly improves the utilization rate and controls the generation of waste; "one molding" eliminates the mold, The cost of fixtures and processing tools; the “localized” production model eliminates the upfront investment in plant and production lines, as well as the cost of transportation and storage in the middle.

CrucibleIndustrialDesign has 3D printed buckles for the 853 seats on the Airbus A380. Each buckle has a mass reduction of 85g compared to the traditional steel buckle. It saves 45,000L of fuel per 1kg of aircraft life, which saves 3.3 million L of fuel. , operating costs of 200 million euros.

3. The advantages of manufacturing complex parts are obvious

In the case of conventional manufacturing, the more complex the shape of the object, the higher the manufacturing cost. For 3D printers , the cost of making complex-shaped items does not increase, and creating a gorgeous, complex-shaped item does not consume more time, skill, or cost than printing a simple square.

In the drone industry, the machining accuracy and complexity of the parts required are very high. There are some parts (for example, a wing with an elliptical cross section, a hollow or porous (honeycomb) structure of metal parts, as shown above) that cannot be manufactured by conventional machining processes. The advent of 3D printing technology has enabled the production of these advanced components.

4. Diversity of material selection

Traditional manufacturing machines cannot easily integrate a variety of raw materials during cutting or molding, and with the development of multi-material 3D printing technology, we have the ability to fuse different raw materials. Raw materials that were previously unmixed will form new materials that have a wide variety of tones and unique properties or functions.

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