General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Establishes Additive Design, Manufacturing Center

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) has established a new Center of Excellence for its Additive Design and Manufacturing (AD&M). The center is focused on rapid-reaction manufacturing for GA-ASI’s line of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) using fully functional and flight-ready additive manufacturing (AM) applications, research and development, large-scale tooling and next-generation flight hardware.

GA-ASI provides design and manufacturing services for UAS, radars, and electro-optic and related mission systems solutions. Over the past decade, the company has invested in AM technologies and created a dedicated AM department five years ago.

“GA-ASI is continually looking for ways to enable, accelerate and integrate additive manufacturing technologies into our designs, our operations and our products,” says GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “Through our AD&M Center of Excellence, we’re using a structured and stringent qualification process for AM applications that delivers a positive business case for us over conventional manufacturing methods. Through a comprehensive and holistic approach, our team of AM professionals are working to increase the adoption of AM parts for the benefit of our aircraft and, ultimately, our customers.”

The company says it has qualified more than 300 flight components across the different AM modalities used for production. In order to develop and qualify flight-capable AM applications, GA-ASI is expanding its AM ecosystem which is composed of the key elements required for bringing an AM application from a prototype stage (print right once) to a production-level stage (print right always).

GA-ASI says its AM ecosystem has enabled the advancement of repeatable and reliable production-grade 3D printing within the company. This has been supplemented by ecosystem-controlled processes, the establishment of an applications team and a well-defined expansion road map.

The company performs some recurring production activities at its AD&M Center of Excellence, but the demand for rapid-reaction and low-rate manufacturing has required the development of a strong AM manufacturing supply chain for the overflow production of complex end-use thermoplastics and metal parts.

GA-ASI estimates that the use of AM parts on its new MQ-9B UAS platform has saved the company over $2 million in tooling costs and over $300,000 per aircraft in recurring cost avoidance by using approximately 240 AM parts on that aircraft platform. Overall, the number of AM applications continues to grow rapidly, fueled by the AM ecosystem established at GA-ASI. As a result, the company already has more than 10,000 additively manufactured components on the aircraft it has produced, and says the new MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian models are leading the industry in the use of AM parts.