Problem: A company that sells drones and drone components is seeing demand for parts that it couldn't satisfy with a contract manufacturer’s process.
Solution: Multi Jet Fusion printing allows users to make multiple parts at once, without sacrificing quality or losing the ability to customize.
By Karen Hanna
Drone operators know what it’s like to be able to go from 0 mph to 80 mph — or even 100 mph — in seconds in all directions. Makers of the technologies could be on the same trajectory, as national lawmakers look to move manufacturing of critical, high-tech models and components on-shore.
From stunt aircraft that shoot videos to drones critical to national defense, Unusual Machines Inc. can make models and parts for a wide variety of applications. To hear COO Drew Camden tell it, the Orlando, Fla.-based company, valued around $9 million on the New York Stock Exchange, has a long runway for a big takeoff — and it plans to use additive manufacturing to get there.
“As more and more pressure comes to move to domestic production, that's what we want to do. We want to serve the American drone industry and help provide more drone companies with U.S.-made parts,” Camden said in August. At the time, he was celebrating the inclusion of his company’s Rotor Riot Brave F7 flight controller on a list of unmanned aerial system (UAS) technologies eligible for acquisition by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
Shifting into high gear
Camden was an engineer for General Motors when a friend turned him onto drones — and YouTube videos tipped his own career in a new direction.
“One of the guys I worked with brought his toy helicopter and was flying it around the office. I was like, ‘That's cool!’ Then, I just went off the deep end, into a hobby,” he said.
He began playing around with remote-controlled (RC) aircraft before turning to FPVs — the drones you've likely seen people piloting from the ground while wearing goggles or staring intently at cell phone screens. FPV stands for first-person view, but with a real-time video feed supplied by the drone, it might as well mean bird’s eye view.
With the ability to see the world from hundreds of feet up, pilots are drawn to test their skills, challenging their planes to take on obstacles, angles and speeds old-school RC drivers wouldn’t have thought possible. Camden was hooked.
“Once I discovered FPV, I really dropped the toy helicopters and all that and was just flying this. Because, now, I don't need to go to an open field and stand out in the sun. I can be flying through the woods and around buildings ... super fun,” he said. “And so then I started doing YouTube videos.”
Rotor Riot — a company that sold drone components to enthusiasts and operated its own YouTube channel using pilots’ stunt videos to create excitement for the products — took notice. In 2017, Chad Kapper, the company’s founder invited Camden to become a content creator. A little over a year later, Camden took over as president. In the spring, after Unusual Machines bought Rotor Riot, along with components maker Fat Shark, he progressed to COO over the entire portfolio.
“I have a passion for drones. I started as a hobbyist user, so getting to see the limits of performance flight push, both in terms of the parts that we're developing and in terms of the pilots pushing themselves to new skill levels, that's extremely fun,” Camden said. “I, once upon a time, was one of the best freestyle pilots in the world, and now I look at the kids today and the tricks they're doing, and I'm like, ‘Damn, they're so good. It's obnoxious.’ ”
Room to maneuver
FPV pilots’ passion for their hobby drives much of Unusual Machines’ business, which brings in about $5 million in revenues every year. But the company sees many opportunities to grow beyond retail, into what Camden refers to as the “enterprise segment” — including applications in war zones, like Ukraine, where at least 100 Unusual Machines drones already are deployed.
Due to their capabilities in these sensitive environments, drones have become a focus of national lawmakers. Along with proposals to boost investment in the industry in the U.S., recent legislation includes the DOD’s vetting process of drones and drone manufacturers, and a 2023 ban on drones and critical drone components manufactured in China.
All that leaves Unusual Machines poised for growth.
“There's always been a passion and an interest in doing more domestic production,” Camden said, “but it's just been cost-prohibitive. Retail customers haven't wanted to pay the difference for American-made parts, but now there's all these tariffs that are being [imposed]. There's legislation restricting how these drones can be used, so, the cost of China's parts are going up, and the ability to make American-made things at a lower cost is becoming more of a reality.”
"If even the Department of Transportation just wanted to have photos taken of a new highway that was being constructed, even if they contracted a private civilian to fly a drone to get those photos, if that individual uses a Chinese-made drone, the DOD’s prohibited from contracting that person,” Camden explained. “So, there's a big push to do more U.S.-made drones and drone components.”
But, Camden said, Unusual Machines doesn’t want to jack up prices or alienate devoted hobbyists, so as it ramps up, it has tried to absorb R&D and other costs into its margins.
“We've got this community of awesome people that drive the technology forward. So, we want to serve that very DIY, homebrew, open-source mindset, but at the same time, we are trying to mature this,” he said.
Embracing Multi Jet Fusion printing
To meet projected volume increases, Unusual Machines has begun assessing the processes and technologies available to the contract manufacturers that produce its parts and planes.
With an array of ever-evolving components and add-ons, FPVs have attracted a large community of people accustomed to building their own from components. For the companies that make the components — like Unusual Machines — that means dealing with small volumes of multiple permutations of designs.
It’s perfect for 3D printing.
3D printing capabilities align well with the needs of many manufacturers, including the makers of drones, according to Francois Minec, global head of polymers for HP Personalization and 3D Printing.
“Ultimately, manufacturers are empowered with our technology to bring innovative polymer applications to market faster and more efficiently, setting a new standard for industrial-grade additive manufacturing,” Minec said. “Within drone and drone part manufacturing, 3D printing is enabling the creation of intricate, robust designs tailored to meet the hyper-specific needs of various drone types.”
Unusual Machines has used HP’s fused-deposition-modeling (FDM) printers, but it’s a slow, one-off process, as Camden explained.
"We found the least risk was to produce one [part] at a time. But that became expensive, and the more you did, the longer production took. We were having trouble keeping up with the volumes of sales that we're doing, so we're still not at the point where we'd want to commit to an injection mold, because ... we could change the design, there’s so many different frames,” he said.
Seeking a way to speed up production while reducing costs and the risk of failed prints, company executives toured 3D printing farm Forecast 3D in Carlsbad, Calif., in April. There, they saw the potential of HP’s Multi Jet Fusion printing process — and they made the switch to the contract manufacturer and its MJF printers just a few months later.
With MJF, Forecast 3D can nest several components in one print volume, rather than printing them separately as a previous contract manufacturer had done with FDM.
“If you picture printing 12 cups on an FDM printer, maybe three rows of four cups, if that maxes out the print bed, then that is the maximum amount of cups you can print at once," John Sutterfield, director of technical programs for Forecast 3D, explained in an email. “You can’t take advantage of the Z-axis since the parts have to be adhered to the build plate. But in MJF, because of the powder bed, we can stack these cups in [the] Z [direction] and build columns of these 12 cups (as long as they are effectively spaced). So, instead of 12 cups, maybe we can get 36 or 48 cups in the same amount of time it takes for the FDM printer to print 12 cups.”
Parts can be oriented in any way, to allow manufacturers to squeeze more into the same volume. That makes the process faster, more efficient and less expensive, Camden said.
“MJF is awesome because you produce as many parts in the build volume as you can fit. The cost is based on running that build volume, not on the part. ... If you have a build volume and you put one part in there, or if you put 100 parts in there, the cost is the same. So, it's either you pay for the whole cost in that one part, or it's distributed across 100, so now we have faster production,” he said.
Also, unlike other printing processes, MJF does not require support material and leaves no witness marks on parts, Sutterfield said.
That leaves the parts looking more polished than the components much of the DIY FPV community is used to seeing.
Camden compares the surface finish to velvet.
“My first reaction is, I thought you had to pay extra for that. The first time they handed me a print, I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, how much extra for this?’ ” he quipped.
The printers are able to produce parts using, Camden said, “the most magical material ever made — TPU.”
Strength, resilience and the ability to absorb vibration are critical characteristics for a material that might have to withstand highway speeds, daring aerobatics and the occasional crash.
While Unusual Machines has explored other materials for its drones, TPU stands out as “flexible” and “indestructible,” Camden said.
And with MJF, it’s even better.
"We looked at some of the other materials, like some of the rigid materials, and it's very clear how much stronger, with the rigid material, MJF is vs. FDM because those layer lines on those rigid materials are ... so brittle. They break right at the layer line. But on MJF, it's a lot tougher. The FDM-produced TPU stuff ... they were pretty well indestructible, as is; we never really had a problem. But, with MJF, we're pretty confident that it's even more strong. I mean, we haven’t broken one yet. We’ve tried.”
Ready for takeoff
In the week after it became the first FPV flight controller on the DOD’s approved list, the Rotor Riot Brave F7 already was attracting a lot of attention, as prospective customers placed presale orders for 6,700 units.
Listed at around $60, the technologies underscore Unusual Machines’ commitment to confronting competition with China-made alternatives head-on. While it contracts for only certain parts to be MJF-printed now, the company is gearing up for the potential of larger-volume demand across its inventory.
"Customer demand has surprised us as the interest [in] our components is even greater than we originally anticipated,” Unusual Machines CEO Allan Evans said in a press release. “We have listened to the feedback that price does matter, and we expect similar demand for other products in our roadmap.”
Over the past several years, the company’s Rotor Riot e-commerce channel has experienced increases of 30 percent per year.
Those numbers might push further printing changes — or even the adoption of injection molding in certain cases.
“It all just depends on volume and product direction," Camden said. “But, as the business grows, we'll just kind of naturally hit more and more points where FDM just stops making sense... MJF is like this perfect thing that we can pivot into.”
With the U.S. pivoting to more production of drones and drone components, the arrows are pointing up for Unusual Machines.
It won’t be leaving its hobbyist fans in the dust, but it will be prepared when its work for the enterprise segment truly takes off.
"The potential enterprise sales could leapfrog one of our other drones to a volume where all of a sudden we want to move it to MJF," Camden said. "If we get an enterprise order, it could quadruple that drone’s volume overnight."
Contact:
HP Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., 650-857-1501, www.hp.com
Karen Hanna | Senior Staff Reporter
Senior Staff Reporter Karen Hanna covers injection molding, molds and tooling, processors, workforce and other topics, and writes features including In Other Words and Problem Solved for Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing, Plastics Recycling and The Journal of Blow Molding. She has more than 15 years of experience in daily and magazine journalism.
