{"id":2296,"date":"2017-08-22T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/inthefold\/?p=2296"},"modified":"2017-09-26T10:17:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T15:17:10","slug":"marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/inthefold\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\/","title":{"rendered":"How U.S. Marine Rhet McNeal Designed a 3D Printable Drone to Cost 200X Less at Autodesk\u2019s Pier 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Henry Tucher<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe want the people using the products to drive innovation<\/em>\u2026\u201d This may sound like the trope of a Silicon Valley evangelist, but it\u2019s actually the goal for the U.S. Marine Corps\u2019 Next Generation Logistics innovation group. NexLog<\/a>, as the group is known, was established in 2015 to advocate for the future of emerging technologies on the front lines and for equipping Marines with the ability to make solutions for their own environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Marines have always been pushing innovation and have always had that forward-thinking mentality,\u201d said Jennifer Walsh the Innovation Challenge Lead at the USMC headquarters in Washington D.C. In recent years, the Marine Corps has recognized the promise of additive manufacturing as central to the future of making things, and has disseminated 3D printers to units around the world and built full-blown maker spaces on a few select bases to help realize the capabilities of this technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want Marines to have the potential to use 3D printing or additive manufacturing to quickly go through the design process and make things possible,\u201d said Walsh. And, given the opportunity, that is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

Enter Rhet McNeal, a 26 year-old Corporal from Griffin, Georgia, who saw problems with the Marines\u2019 hand-launched fixed-wing drones, the RQ-11 Raven and the RQ-12 Wasp III. These small drones are typically outfitted with cameras for field surveillance or other light payloads. By military standards, Ravens and Wasps are relatively inexpensive, but at $35,000 and $49,000 per unit respectively, they still cost enough that very few Marines are authorized to fly them. More to the point, they require $100,000+ ground control systems and are sometimes tricky to launch. And failed launches (aka crashes) can mean expensive repairs.<\/p>\n

McNeal, who holds a Bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech, was confident he could make a 3D-printed drone with the surveillance capabilities Marines actually used with the Raven and Wasp but at a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have these drones that do a hundred things that make them cost between $35,000 and $50,000, but the soldiers normally only use the two or three big capabilities,\u201d said McNeal. \u201cI wanted to strip it down to what we actually use so that our drone does not cost so much we are afraid to use it \u2013 if you break it, not a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the Marines believed in him. Last year, \u201cAdaptable and Affordable 3D Drones\u201d \u2013 the proposal for a quick-assemble, transportable drone modeled after the Wasp but with easily printable 3D parts by McNeal (and a team of five other collaborators) \u2013 was one of 17 winning ideas selected from more than 300 submissions to NexLog\u2019s 2016 Logistics Innovation Challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery Marine has an assault pack that\u2019s standard issue. I made my drone so it can snap apart into four parts and can fit into the pack,\u201d said McNeal, who effectively acted as the team leader. \u201cFor somebody that has never messed with it before, it takes about two and a half minutes to assemble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even more impressive, McNeal\u2019s drone, nicknamed \u201cScout,\u201d could be built for an astounding $613 with off-the-shelf electronics, 3D printer resin and controlled from the iPhone app Q Ground Control. A Scout drone system (2 drones, 1 control system) cost less than 0.5% of a $250,000 Wasp system!<\/p>\n

As a winner of the Logistics Innovation Challenge, McNeal was given access to Penn State\u2019s Applied Research Laboratory (ARL)<\/a>, a U.S. Navy University Affiliated Research Center, where he first began designing the drone and experimenting with 3D printing parts for the Scout\u2019s wings.<\/p>\n

But the big leap in the project\u2019s development occurred while McNeal was at Autodesk\u2019s Pier 9<\/a> technology center, a 27,000 square foot workshop outfitted with 3D printers, CNC machines, woodshop, metal shop \u2013 not to mention software and hardware experts in every field \u2013 located in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Late in 2016 McNeal got word from Captain Christopher Wood, the Marines\u2019 co-lead for additive manufacturing, that there was an opening for a 4-month residency at Pier 9. Hoping to push his prototype forward, fine-tune his design in Inventor<\/a> and Fusion 360<\/a>, and work on fabrication challenges with Netfabb<\/a>, McNeal began as a Pier 9 Resident in January of 2017.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cPier 9 is this great community to test ideas, for example, \u2018this is the problem I\u2019m having\u2026 it\u2019s not really so much a problem, but something I think could be made better,\u2019\u201d said McNeal. \u201cThere is no way on earth the Scout would be as good as it is today if not for the great people and equipment I was able to work with on a daily basis at Pier 9.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having finished his residency and produced a functioning drone, McNeal is back on base in Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The design files and build specifications for the Scout have been handed off to The MITRE Corporation<\/a>, which supplies and tests many of the Marines\u2019 drones and will carry the Scout through the process of certification and hopefully wider-scale manufacturing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Summing up the purpose of the NexLog competition that brought McNeal\u2019s drone to life, Innovation Challenge lead Walsh said, \u201cWe want Marines to know this is your project. We\u2019ll connect you with the right engineers and technology to bring your idea to fruition.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many Marines, projects like McNeal\u2019s demonstrate to them that their ideas will be heard and supported. For McNeal, it is time to return to training and service \u2013 and to finding problems he now knows can be solved with the support of the Marine Corps \u2026and a 3D printer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Henry Tucher<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe want the people using the products to drive innovation<\/em>\u2026\u201d This may sound like the trope of a Silicon Valley evangelist, but it\u2019s actually the goal for the U.S. Marine Corps\u2019 Next Generation Logistics innovation group. NexLog<\/a>,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":2307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[266,436,580,579,581],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future-of-making-things","category-manufacturing","tag-3d-printing","tag-additive-manufacturing","tag-drone","tag-military","tag-usmc"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow U.S. Marine Rhet McNeal Designed a 3D Printable Drone to Cost 200X Less at Autodesk\u2019s Pier 9 - In the Fold<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.autodesk.com\/inthefold\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Autodesk\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Autodesk\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/2fe6071949598957391b579ca67e73a9\"},\"headline\":\"How U.S. Marine Rhet McNeal Designed a 3D Printable Drone to Cost 200X Less at Autodesk\u2019s Pier 9\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-08-22T15:00:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-09-26T15:17:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":932,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/71\\\/2017\\\/08\\\/Thumbnail.png\",\"keywords\":[\"3D printing\",\"additive manufacturing\",\"Drone\",\"Military\",\"USMC\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Future of Making Things\",\"Manufacturing\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.autodesk.com\\\/inthefold\\\/marine-drone-autodesks-pier-9\\\/\",\"name\":\"How U.S. Marine Rhet McNeal Designed a 3D Printable Drone to Cost 200X Less at Autodesk\u2019s Pier 9 - 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