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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Slight spoiler:
It's a bit "paperclip maximizer" and a bit "grey goo"
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac
In fact I was skeptical based on the article, but blown away by the paper.