Next Horizons: How Additive Manufacturing Is Transforming the UAV Industry
- janakuthe8
- 8 hours ago
- 5 min read
Demand for drones is soaring worldwide, and additive manufacturing is rising to meet the demands of manufacturers wanting to create better flying machines. A recent discussion focussed on the intersection of the two.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is proving a sweet spot for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) due to its potential to reshape and speed up design, development and production.
Drones and AM intersect across countless industries, from infrastructure inspection to surveillance, to mapping, delivering medical supplies to remote areas, to environmental conservation efforts and far beyond. Their growing synergy lies in AM’s strength – rapid prototyping, lightweighting, customisation and tooling-free short-run production.
The recent ‘Next Horizons: Additive Manufacturing Transforming the UAV’ industry roundtable heard that AM had been indispensable for Melbourne startup C2 Robotics across projects such as its OGRE UAV, the air-dropped projectile the OGP, and the Speartooth LUUV underwater drone.
C2 Robotics specialises in robotics and autonomous systems operating across the maritime, land and air domains. Mechanical Engineer Dung Phan explained that AM allows the company to build “small, smart and many drones that could improve sovereign capability, with the core design philosophy rooted in mass manufacturing at scale.”
For the OGRE, he noted “A whole drone could be sent out, printed and assembled and flying in less than two weeks.” HP’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) was used to produce all end parts of the UAV except for electronics.
Far away from Melbourne, the Ukraine war has shown how the possibilities of rapid, fast and low-cost are reshaping battlefields.
UAVs for warfare have historically been elaborate, large, and expensive, but the Ukraine war has brought with it a “cheap-drone revolution”, as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has called it.
Soaring drone demand
Demand for HP’s services from drone companies is high, according to Daniel Thomsen, HP Inc, Head of Additive Manufacturing Solutions, Go-To-Market, APJ.
He added that properly leveraging AM requires deep skills in Design for Additive Manufacturing, aerospace engineering, and other disciplines.
Highlighting the possibilities offered by the much-vaunted design freedom attached to AM, he elaborated: “It’s about the parts that come out of the printer and how you optimise that design. How do you gain that design knowledge, and who has that knowledge that you can access to get to something like this?”
He pointed to The Eye Above’s BushRanger drone, developed as a tool to counter African wildlife poachers, marvelling at both the complexity and cleverness of a part.
While holding the part, he commented “There’s wing assembly alignments here, there’s holes to put through carbon fibre to give the wings a bit more rigidity and hold them all together. There are mounts here for the electronics. When I flip it over here, there’s a little clip to hold wires. There are holes in here for removing powder from the part when it’s printed. This is a very easy, very smart design for both manufacturing and end use performance.”
The wing features 0.6 millimetre wall thickness combined with internal lattice structures, delivering “strength without the weight.
Many nations are seeing drones as a requirement for defence, he added, but there are countless other drone applications serving other segments.
Homegrown success stories in the world of drones include Emesent, which emerged from CSIRO research and specialises in LiDAR mapping and data analytics for mining and other customers; Infravision, which recently raised $US91 million to scale its solution for stringing high voltage power lines; and Lab 360 Solar, a UNSW spinout that was awarded $3.96 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) in September to develop new imaging technology with the potential to transform how large-scale solar farms are managed.
When it comes to 3D printed drones, the global market is apparently growing robustly. According to Custom Market Insights, this is currently worth about $US 852 million, with a predicted compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.7 per cent to 2034.
AM has regularly met a need for short-run production, for reasons like the high level of customisability and zero need for tooling.
For C2 Robotics, Phan sees it being useful in production unless batch sizes were to reach maybe 5,000 to 10,000.
Besides finished parts produced by MJF, his business uses a different variety of AM, fused filament fabrication (FFF), for early prototypes.
The surface finish is not suitable for end-use parts, he said, but the method is useful for fast-moving projects.
“Design iterations happen on a week-to-week basis. We don’t need to wait months,” he said.
Where it makes sense
FFF (sometimes called FDM) and MJF belong to two of the seven broad families of AM technologies, as recognised by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM.)
Many companies use a variety of different AM types for different purposes.
There’s “no best printer,” explained Thomsen, with “certain printers… better at applications than other printers.”
An FDM machine might be fine for a UAV, he said, for example as a low-cost “one-way drone”.
Thomsen said that AM had places where it was useful, provided the users know what they’re doing, but it isn’t for every job.
“When you think about using additive, don’t think you need to print the whole thing in additive,” he said.
“My biggest guide for this is to use additive where it makes sense… A very simple example here is between the fuselage and the tail section, that’s just a carbon rod. Why would you print it? It’s not expensive to need a rod, it does what it needs to do. Don’t print it.”
Printing is just one step
Materialise operates across 21 countries and employs 2,500 employees, providing 3D printing software, consulting and other digital manufacturing services including printing bureaus.
Kelvin Wee, Managing Director of Materialise Malaysia, said that compared to five years ago, customers “are more knowledgeable right now, and a lot of them have access to FDM printers.”
He added that companies could benefit from experimenting more with 3D printing, “to try out things that really matter.” There was also a lack of appreciation for the importance of software beyond design, for example in roles like order management, quality control, and integrating with business systems. Materialise’s platform supports these needs by managing orders and manufacturing workflows across the entire additive manufacturing process — from printing to post‑processing and quality control. It brings together tools like Magics and Build Processors with an open ecosystem that can integrate third‑party applications, business systems, machines, and factory equipment. The result is a more streamlined, connected workflow that helps to reduce data silos and supports scale production.
The session’s final presenter, Fraunhofer IPAT Institute Director Professor Ingomar Kelbassa, shared the approach of industrialising AM through addressing the entire end-to-end process chain from CAD to finished good, including finishing machining and post-processing steps.
He illustrated the importance of a holistic view of 3D printing for those wanting to lift productivity. Machine throughput is a place you can look, but it may not be the best one.
For example, Siemens makes gas turbine blades using AM.
“The cost and the time for the 3D printing process step within the entire route is 5 per cent, he said of that particular application.
“So you’re optimising 5 per cent, and you do not touch 95 per cent. Is that smart? I don’t know.”
