Australian advanced manufacturing company Titomic has delivered the world’s largest titanium UAV, measuring over 1.8 metres in diameter.
The UAV was manufactured at Titomic’s R&D Bureau in Melbourne, home of the world’s largest and fastest metal 3D printer.
The system incorporates Titomic’s patented additive manufacturing technology, Titomic Kinetic Fusion. The technology, co-developed with and licenced from the CSIRO, is a patented metal additive manufacturing process utilising supersonic deposition of metal powders to digitally manufacture metal parts and complex surface coatings of super alloys and dissimilar metals such as nickel, copper, scandium and alloys such as stainless steel, inconel, and tungsten carbide.
Titanium, with its superior strength-to-weight ratio, provides the UAV with a strong yet lightweight and ballistics protection, which will provide durability for reliable in-field use by military and law enforcement.
As titanium’s use is often prohibitively expensive and difficult to fabricate using traditional methods, the prototype demonstrates Titomic’s ability to utilise titanium in applications that previously did not overcome a cost-benefit analysis, forcing manufacturers to use lesser desired materials in design, such as heavier metals or fragile plastics.
The technology is widely applicable to the defence industry and can also create parts such as armaments, traditionally created through metal casting, resulting in reduced production time and increased output.
“We’re excited to be working with the global defence industry to combine Australian resources, manufacturing and innovation which will increase our sovereign capability to provide further modern technology for Australia and its defence force,” Titomic Managing Director Jeff Lang said.