GA-ASI establishes Additive Design and Manufacturing Center of Excellence

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI, San Diego, Calif., U.S.), an affiliate of General Atomics that designs and manufactures unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), radars and pilotless arial craft that are made largely of composite materials, has established a new Center of Excellence for its Additive Design and Manufacturing (AD&M). The center is focused on rapid-reaction manufacturing of GA-ASI’s line of UAS using fully functional and flight-ready additive manufacturing (AM) applications, research and development (R&D), large-scale tooling and next-generation flight hardware.

Over the past decade, GA-ASI says it has invested in the onboarding of AM technologies, as well as leading the formation and rapid growth of a dedicated AM department five years ago.

“GA-ASI is continually looking for ways to enable, accelerate and integrate AM technologies into our designs, our operations and our products,” GA-ASI president David R. Alexander says. “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.”

GA-ASI estimates that the use of AM parts on its new UAS platform — the MQ-9B — has saved the company more than $2 million in tooling costs and more than $300,000 per aircraft in recurring cost avoidance.

GA-ASI 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 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’s AM ecosystem has reportedly 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 roadmap.

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