What are the challenges of drone manufacturing?

Whether to create a whole drone or just some parts, additive manufacturing is offering the possibility of accessing high performance and innovative features. Micro drones, pocket drones, FPV quadcopter drones, radio-controlled drones, every idea and project can come to life in the world of 3D printing. 3D printed drones can be a real asset.

What are the advantages of using additive manufacturing for drones?

• Create lightweight parts

From the automotive and aeronautics industry to the drone industry, we’ve noticed that one of the most regular requirements was linked to the weight of the whole vehicle they needed to produce. Indeed, while creating a flying object such as a drone, it is important to get the lightest parts possible. Additive manufacturing allows innovation in terms of design, from hollowed parts to interesting structures such as lattices. 

By rethinking the structure of a drone you already have, you can end up with a significant weight reduction! Design for Additive Manufacturing allows for completely innovative structures that can change the way drones and drone attachments are made. The result? A lighter, stronger, more functional drone.

• Complex design and assembly

While manufacturing an electronic automated device, you need several parts working and interacting together: for drones, robotics, and electronics, additive manufacturing offers numerous advantages. Using this manufacturing technique is an opportunity to create complex designs and geometries, impossible to create with traditional manufacturing technologies such as CNC machining or injection molding. Additive manufacturing is allowing to print fully assembled parts, a way to save time by shortening the assembly process, reduce the number of components, and also reduce weight.

• Limitless innovation for your projects

 3D printing allows you to design according to your products and projects, not according to stock fittings. You need a brand new innovative feature, requiring perfectly adapted parts? Feel free to test and iterate your connectors, mounts or attachments thanks to the short lead-times offered by 3D printing.  

• Maintenance management, spare parts

Implementing additive manufacturing in your production process will also offer better maintenance management. Additive manufacturing can be used to produce spare parts when you need them. You don’t have to worry about a whole stock of spare parts, you should invest your energy in the creation of a digital inventory, that will seriously improve your maintenance and risk management!

• Mass-customization

Are you creating drones based on specific customers’ expectations and requirements? In this case, you might need to build drones with specific parts and features. Customization is expensive while using traditional manufacturing methods such as injection molding, but not with additive manufacturing. For small series, 3D printing will be a cost-saving technique, as you can print the exact amount of parts you need.

Examples: Best 3D printed drones projects

At Sculpteo, we are already working with drone companies looking for quality, reliability and innovation. Hexadrone is a company based in France, building drones and offering their service to film for TV shows, advertisements or movies. As they are creating high-quality filming, they need a stable drone.

As there is actually a weight limitation for drones, Hexadrone needed to use a light material. And that is where 3D printing shows to be a helpful solution. They used our plastic material, and the SLS technology enables them to get resistant and complex parts, perfectly fitting their needs.

We’ve also worked with Svarmi, Iceland’s leading drone specialists in drone mapping for scientific and industrial purposes. 

“With 3D printing, one does not need to think too much about how to manufacture and can save maybe up to 30% of the initial concept design time.” explained Svarmi after using our online 3D printing service. As their product development is based on their clients’ expectations, 3D printing allows them to be free and customize their drone as much as their customers need it. As this company explained to us: “Other traditional manufacturing methods are too slow and costly for our purposes since we need to be able to have something ready within a week or two. After integrating the new sensors to our drones we test them out with our customers and redefine the requirements if needed to suit the task and sometimes redo the process again by refining the design or selection of sensors.”

If you want to discover more examples, check out the best 3D printed drones projects!

Are you interested by the potential of additive manufacturing for the creation of drones? Learn how to build a drone.