ESSENTIAL RESEARCH AREA:
THE SCIENCE FOR MANUFACTURING AT THE POINT OF NEED By Craig Collins
There was something special about the unmanned aerial vehicle that took flight at Fort Benning, Georgia, in December 2016: Much of it was manufactured there, on the spot, according to design specifications supplied by a team from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). he team was there to showcase recent advances in 3D printing technology, as part of the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments program. The small quadcopter that flew above Fort Benning was a combination of printed (the outer shell and propeller arms) and off-the-shelf (the motor and propeller assemblies) parts. The Army has been an early adopter and refiner of “additive manufacturing,” or AM – the process of building structures by introducing material into an empty space, rather than the traditional “subtractive” process of machining parts and structures from masses of material. The most widely known method of additive manufacturing is 3D printing, and the Army has made use of it to produce parts such as washers, treads for robotic ground vehicles, valve stems for MRAP vehicle tires – and even, in the fall of 2016, nearly all of the parts for a working grenade launcher. The big deal at Fort Benning was the process used to create the quadcopter, which the ARL team described as an “ondemand small unmanned aircraft system,” or ODSUAS. The drone’s computer-aided design
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(CAD) was created in the moment, based on specifications supplied by team members. The demonstration of this process points to a dynamic future in which drones – or anything useful that can be created by additive manufacturing – can be created on demand, by forward-deployed units, to satisfy specific mission requirements.
The 3D-printed ODSUAS flies at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour. Although the lightweight shell and propeller arms are printed using additive manufacturing, the motors and propellers are assembled using off-the-shelf equipment.
PHOTO BY ANGIE DEPUYDT
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