3D-printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines
news.mit.edu34 points by rbanffy 2 days ago
34 points by rbanffy 2 days ago
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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).
3d printers are also CNC. My impression is that people often use the term to mean CNC mill. Much like "drone" implies "quadcopter" despite the existence of other very different types of "drone".
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.
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.
They print the drones at the frontline: https://sensofusion.com/dronefactory/
To print a drone you must transport input materials anyway, which weight at least the same.
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.
3d printers making 3d printers making drones is a key plotline of the Bobiverse novels.
Not just drone printers, but also field soldering robots. Many components are still through hole. Putting tray of PCBs and let robot solder the joints would be game changing.
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"
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.
Any video or pictures of the motor itself?
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.
I see it on page 17 (18 including the MIT front page)
It's a linear motor, more like a speaker voice coil without cone.
fig 17 shows the assembled motor
it's a linear motor.. like a speaker coil assembly
fig23 shows how a radial assembly could be made