Angel Aerial Systems is relying on desktop 3D printers to mass-produce airframe components for its Trio long-endurance drone for first responders. I describe why in my earlier article about Angel. To summarize: While the Prusa HT90 machines Angel uses are not chiefly or necessarily production machines, they have proven capable of production repeatability, and Angel sees advantages in designing its product to be manufacturable on a low-cost platform. Read the full article. And in the video above, I explore this choice in greater detail. (I’ll wait here while you watch.)
In the video, you hear me use the words “print farm,” a phrase commonly used to describe certain additive manufacturing applications like this one. I thought more about the term after recording this. The phrase is both fitting and curious. It is fitting because of how well the agricultural metaphor describes the promise of production on a collection of small 3D printers. In a manufacturing system such as this, the parts grow, the process is gradual, it is quiet and safe, and a single person tending the work can gather the parts when they are done.
But the phrase is also curious (A) because it is not clear exactly when it applies (both lasers and large machines would seem to move the process in a direction that feels less like farming, yet some would still use the phrase for these machines), and (B) because of the way the “print farm” idea still draws on promise to a great extent. Even though the phrase has been with us a long time, what it describes it not common. I have seen few instances of, say, 15 or more small 3D printers all at once running simultaneous production as part of the same “farm.” With its six 3D printers, the application in the video is perhaps more like a print garden. However, part of what caught my attention with Angel Aerial Systems is how commited they are to the farm concept. They have created their product to be brought to market with a production system that will entail no factory as we imagine it, but instead space and tables for many more of these small machines. With a few more printer rows like the one described in the video, all producing parts for harvesting later, soon Angel’s operation will fit what the phrase has long described.
Videography: Hannah Zelinski
Next up or coming soon: Machining. I am exploring its potential interaction with AI. Machining as an operation is challenged to directly benefit from AI in the same way that process operations do. However, I believe I see the path for how AI could integrate with, and change, some of the human inputs we associate with machining, and I am pursuing a story that I believe will let me talk about this. Subscribe so you know when I am ready with this and other work.
