Comment by delichon
6 hours 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.
6 hours 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.
True, but twenty first century anarchists might find, on the street, their own use for these things - and in so doing, obviate the need for state/military/supremacy, in the first place.
At least, one might hope.
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.
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.
Yeah but it's fast enough, light, portable, repairable, can be setup directly in your bunker in the middle of the wood if needed, etc.
You're still thinking like it's 1990
3D printing will remain constrained by fragile centralized supply chains for feedstock until someone develops an effective practical decomposer/recomposer that can break down common plastics into their constituent monomers, oligomers, or other reusable chemical building blocks and then reform them into high-quality filament or resin on demand.
And then, the next step for deco/reco will be the metal frontier.
Unless you think you're only going to need a couple spools to get the job done before never using the thing again.
And where do you get in the woods all the other mass produced parts needed for a drone, like chips, sensors, engine, battery, ..? Unfortunately 3d printers ain't replicators yet.
So yeah, if you have special needs, modifying a special ops drone, or simple part printing, they are great.
Or like I said, distributed manufactoring.
> 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.
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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/
Geeze, things are getting wild.
Interestingly, I’ve seen this exact drone design from hobbyists attempting record speed runs. Now I’m curious who is copying who on the design.
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.