3D-printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines
51 points by rbanffy 3 days ago | 23 comments
alexpotato 5 hours ago
Highly recommend people read the story Autofac by Philip K. Dick [0]
replySlight spoiler:
It's a bit "paperclip maximizer" and a bit "grey goo"
EA-3167 4 hours ago
The actual paper is so much easier to read and much more informative: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17452759.2026.2...
replyIn fact I was skeptical based on the article, but blown away by the paper.
RobotToaster 2 hours ago
I hope so, the article makes it sound like they just bolted a syringe to an e3d toolchanger.
replyNegativeLatency 5 hours ago
Any video or pictures of the motor itself?
replyjotux 5 hours ago
replyMarkusQ 4 hours ago
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.
replyDoctorOetker 3 hours ago
I see it on page 17 (18 including the MIT front page)
replyIt's a linear motor, more like a speaker voice coil without cone.
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.
You're still thinking like it's 1990
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.
~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.