Thursday, August 4, 2011

Praxis: The world's first PRINTED UAV



Amazing.

Link courtesy of Global Guerrillas.

5 comments:

Sean said...

I still don't get what "printed" in this case, means. WTF are they talking about, in terms we can relate to or understand? What are the mechanics of this "printing?".

Old NFO said...

It was 'printed' on a special printer... that builds up material by using a laser to heat plastic powder

http://www.eos.info/en/products/systems-equipment/plastic-laser-sintering-systems/eosint-p-760.html

Anonymous said...

Heh, this is old hat to anyone who is into Formula 1. If anyone reading this is familiar with Formula 1, then they will recognize that this this is more evidence that unregulated markets produce great technology!

Sean, it's basically a vat of goo that they shine laser light into in order to build up a piece without the need for tools, molds, machines, ect. It is "printed" out of the goo. Since there is no need for mold and tools and so on, virtually any shape can be made faster and easier than before.

Here is a video.

This isn't a particularly good video. I once saw this process in more detail, literally seeing a perfect scale model of an F1 car rising out of this white goo that was destined for wind tunnel testing. Really space-age stuff.

fireplaceguy said...

3D Printing is better known as stereolithography. 3 dimensional objects can be inexpensively "grown", which dramatically cuts the cost of manufacturing complex parts.

In the case of this UAV, the deployed cost per unit has probably just dropped by an order of magnitude.

Score one for the surveillance state...

Justthisguy said...

Nothing we couldn't have done with some balsa, some Ambroid, a few single-edge razor blades, some Jap tissue and some nitrate dope back in 1960, or so. Oh, and some knowledge of how airplanes work.