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3D-printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines

26 points rbanffy 1 day ago 16 comments

delichon 1 hour ago | parent

Twenty first century military supremacy may go to whoever can produce the most best drone printers. Meaning whoever can produce the most best drone printer printers.

bitmasher9 1 hour ago | parent

Drones are just one part of the equation. They are a “last mile” solution, which makes them very strong on battle fronts and come with a defender advantage.

We still require logistics to transport the drones into effective range, intelligence to know the most effective targets, and military grade wireless communications to guide the drones.

If the intelligence is good enough long range missiles can kinetically disable drone production or drone stockpiles.

cavoirom 59 minutes ago | parent

They print the drones at the frontline: https://sensofusion.com/dronefactory/

IsTom 27 minutes ago | parent

To print a drone you must transport input materials anyway, which weight at least the same.

micromacrofoot 52 minutes ago | parent

Militaries are already using on-device AI to provide drone targeting, so airdropping a bunch in and letting them wreak havoc is very possible and not complicated as that matures.

lukan 47 minutes ago | parent

Printing is good for prototyping and if you are making small numbers/need to have a distributed manufacturing (because of bombs falling on them).

But for mass producing a solid design, 3D printing is the worst solution, because it is slow. Injection molding would be the fast (and cheap) way.

georgemcbay 33 minutes ago | parent

> But for mass producing a solid design, 3D printing is the worst solution, because it is slow. Injection molding would be the fast (and cheap) way.

~10 years ago I was really into designing my own "drones" (but the kind that don't kill people) and I primarily used a CNC machine (Shapeoko 3).

Multirotor vehicles are a good match for designs that are a series of mostly flat plates connected via simple standoffs and you can knock those out really quick with a CNC machine.

Injection molding is certainly much better than 3D printing for scale, but CNC is a nice middle ground that allows for quick manufacture while still having a lot of the same flexibility for iterative design that you get with 3D printing.

mdorazio 21 minutes ago | parent

CNC is a terrible choice if you’re making flat plates or can modify your design to use flat plates + basic bends and stand offs. Laser or water jet are significantly faster and cheaper.

georgemcbay 16 minutes ago | parent

> CNC is a terrible choice if you’re making flat plates or can modify your design to use flat plates + basic bends and stand offs. Laser or water jet are significantly faster and cheaper.

Laser cutters and waterjets are CNC machines.

And yeah they are generally faster than using a drill, but cheaper is situation specific (can be, depending upon the scale).

xoxxala 41 minutes ago | parent

3d printers making 3d printers making drones is a key plotline of the Bobiverse novels.

Luker88 22 minutes ago | parent

3d printers are wonderful for rapid development, but are much slower than industrial serial production.

Quantity has a quality all of it own, and all that.

Ukraine is doing wonders managing tons of different producers and models, but Russia production capabilities have always been a problem.

Ukraine was in the lead with their interceptor drone. Unfortunately now russia has refined their drones to not be multiple pieces sticked together, and has added small jet engines.

The new drones are both too fast for interceptor drones and might even survive a hit thanks to the body made from a single sheet of metal.

Now the new russia drones cost about double, but intercepted rate went down from 90+% to about 55%. Math says the new drones are more than paying for themselves.

NegativeLatency 1 hour ago | parent

Any video or pictures of the motor itself?

jotux 1 hour ago | parent

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/165206/NVPP_A...

MarkusQ 14 minutes ago | parent

So... no? The paper shows the motors used in the printer, and some of the parts it produced, but not the actual actuator it made.

alexpotato 42 minutes ago | parent

Highly recommend people read the story Autofac by Philip K. Dick [0]

Slight spoiler:

It's a bit "paperclip maximizer" and a bit "grey goo"

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac

EA-3167 17 minutes ago | parent

The actual paper is so much easier to read and much more informative: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17452759.2026.2...

In fact I was skeptical based on the article, but blown away by the paper.