lunes, 31 de marzo de 2014

FDM Telescoping Wing UAV


Engineers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (Cambridge, MA) 3D printed (FDM technology on a Fortus 400mc) a UAV with telescoping wings made of Ultem 9085.


Structure was primarily FDM except for a carbon fiber backbone that all the parts were attached to. Designed to be highly modular, the aircraft was essentially 3 reconfigurable pieces: the fuselage pod on the front with the avionics and batteries, the wings, and the empennage.


To adjust the CG for different payloads all the parts can be moved around. The wings are printed without support material (an option only available with Fortus 3D Production Systems) with an internal structure that made them pretty strong (see above video).