Airflight adopts AM for large-scale cargo drone parts
December 7, 2022
Airflight, a startup aerospace company based in Brønderslev, Denmark, is working to develop multi-rotor aircraft, including large drone-based flying cranes. Following its participation in an Additive Manufacturing design optimisation course at the Danish AM-Hub, the company is reported to have already benefitted from the technology, reducing the weight of brackets used to hold the arms of the drone by some 67%.
“In the project, we have achieved an 11 kg weight reduction, and reduced the amount of material by 80%,” stated Mikkel Kærsgaard Sørensen, Airflight. “The value for us is the extreme design flexibility where we can achieve greater strength-to-weight ratio, which is important in aviation, as it means that we can fly for longer, or with a heavier load.”
Throughout 2022, Danish AM Hub – in collaboration with the partners Danish Technological Institute, PLM Group, Hexagon and Wikifactory – guided fifteen Danish SMEs through a new innovation course with the aim of strengthening the companies to benefit even more from the technological and business potential within AM. The course focuses on rolling out Additive Manufacturing to small and medium-sized companies, as well as providing concrete support and help to work with the technology through design. The specific aim of the DfAM course is to re-design the participants’ products or components, thus enabling these to be produced with greater strength, less material waste, new and better functionality, and on-demand.
