What kinds of 3D printed drone parts are available

Drones or UAV for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle are more and more common. They are now used in several sectors, such as agriculture, military, aerospace, cinema, or security. 3D printing can be a useful tool to create a drone or can help you to begin with your drone project. Indeed, this technology can be used to work on the design and the resistance of the drone. 3D printing enables you to do some rapid prototyping, but it’s also possible to produce a finished drone thanks to 3D printing. Micro drone, pocket drone, FPV quadcopter drone (First Person View), radio-controlled drone, every idea and project can come to life in the world of 3D printing, and that is exactly what we are going to see in this blogpost.

What are the benefits of using 3D Printing for Drone Manufacturing
The 3D printing industry allows you to create your Drone; it’s a perfect way to get a customized drone as per your needs. It costs you less, and the product development process is faster with additive manufacturing technology. It is possible to create lightweight drones, different size drones, and even faster ones.

Create lightweight parts – The parts manufactured via 3D printing is light with excellent strength. These are the two prominent factors needed for drones.

Complex design and assembly – Any intricate design and body can be easily 3D printed, making it very easy to test new designs and variants.

Maintenance management, spare parts – Any maintenance and spare parts can be manufactured with a click of a button by 3D printing technology and different materials.

Mass-customization – 3D printing is the technology that will enable faster manufacturing in a quicker time and mass customization at a moment’s notice

Optimize your parts by rethinking your design – Highly detailed, accurate to micro levels, and smooth scale models printed by 3D printing technology is often used to showcase design ideas. These models also help in situations where CAD models are not sufficient for identifying design issues.

Access perfectly adapted materials – 3D printing allows you to create a broad range of styles that can be further customized to your customers’ requirements

Customized Drones – 3D printing has enabled you to manufacture personalized drones according to your needs and requirements. This increases the feasibility of making customized drones. Any specific part of a store-bought drone can also be tailored to suit your needs.

Easy Upgradation – 3D printing supports the up-gradation of the Drone’s parts to make it more efficient. Design iterations are very economical with this 3D printing technology as compared to the traditional manufacturing processes. This brings in the scope of making many modifications in the 3D design, 3D Printing them, and testing the 3D Printed parts till the desired result is achieved. Flexibility and speed do not stand in the way of the experiment.

Improved Performance – The weight of a drone affects its flight time. The lighter the Drone is, the longer it flies. A lightweight drone has improved battery life, is more responsive and agile during flight. The parts of the Drone are made lighter by optimizing the design structures and maintaining aerodynamics. The choice of material used for 3D printing also plays an essential role in making the parts light, and the designer has the flexibility to try different materials in the prototype stage.

What parts of the Drone can be 3D Printed?
Almost everything in a drone can be 3D Printed (apart from the electronic components).

Following is the list of a few pieces that we can think of right now:
Frame
Landing gear
Propellers
Camera mount
Antenna holder
Protective equipment like prop guards
And almost everything…

How to Build Your Own 3D Printed Drone
With 3D printing, it’s possible to produce most of the components needed to build a drone or quadcopter, besides the electronics. 3D printed drone parts can include the chassis, any additional protective casing for the frame, propellers, landing gear, motors mounts, accessory mounts (i.e. for scanners, cameras, sensors, or other useful equipment), and housing for remotes and the drone’s power source.

To build your own DIY drone, you can pick from a variety of off the shelf open-source designs, 3D modeling new parts or accessories on your own offers limitless possibilities to adapt a drone design to specific applications. Online communities such as RC Groups, DIY Drones, and of course, Reddit, can also offer plenty of support and inspiration.

To 3D print your drone, you can use any of the common plastic 3D printing technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM), stereolithography (SLA), or selective laser sintering (SLS), depending on your requirements.

Of the three technologies, SLA 3D printing offers a sweet spot for high precision and a wide variety of materials. Due to the nature of drones, we recommend choosing a material that can handle compression, stretching, bending, and impacts without breaking, such as the Tough and Durable family of SLA resins.

WKproto is a professional rapid prototyping and low-volume production manufacture specializing in 3D printing, CNC machining, and Vacuum Casting. Our factory and parter factories enable rapid prototyping of designs from our customers and low volume production for market verification.

We have three factories. 3D printing factory meets the demands of most 3D printing services with 100 SLA machines, 10 SLS machines, 10 MJF machines, 10 SLM machines, and 20 FDM machines. CNC machining factories for processing metals, plastic and more materials with more than 200 machines for CNC milling/CNC lathes/EDM / Wire EDM and the Vacuum Casting factory is for low volume production for ABS、PC、PP、PE、PA、POM、PMMA、PVC.