How They Build Composite Drones: CEO Shares Process and Hybrid Manufacturing Tips

Welcome to a Pathfinder Interview, where we do deep dives with industry experts to uncover insights from the source. In today's episode, we'll do a deep dive interview with John Selby - CEO of Selby Piper, where we discuss the process, materials, costs and advantages of composite drone manufacturing using Fiberglass (as well as the pitfalls of carbon fiber). Enjoy! https://www.selbypiper.com/ https://customcarbon.co.uk/ Pathfinder Series:    • Pathfinder Series   Pathfinder Interviews:    • Pathfinder Interviews   Pathfinder Explained:    • Pathfinder Explained   I Built an Autonomous Drone at Home:    • I Built an Autonomous Drone at Home   I Built a QuadPlane with my 3D Printer:    • I Built a QuadPlane with my 3D Printer   3D Printable Designs: https://www.thingiverse.com/pathfinde... Landing Page: https://www.nomadiumrobotics.com/ Fixed wing drones have 10 times the range of traditional rotor drones, unlocking exciting use cases and business opportunities. Vertical Take-Off and Landing, enables superior autonomy, additional use-cases and rapid reusability (drone in a box) of fixed wing drones. Autonomy reduces operational costs with orders of magnitude, making services widely available to businesses and governments, while on-board machine vision enables completely new solutions to their challenging problems. 3D Printing with advanced filaments cuts production costs with orders of magnitude to enable nation--wide coverage with relatively small capital investment. With Nomadium Robotics, I'm combining all 4 of those requirements to develop aerial robotics for a resilient future | www.nomadiumrobotics.com Building your own UAV is an incredibly fulfilling and challenging experience, which I am hoping you will embark on. Link to custom designs: https://www.thingiverse.com/pathfinde... 0:00 - Overview 0:52 - Interview 1:55 - Pre-Preg Manufacturing 3:31 - Moulds 4:32 - Vacuum & Curing Process 5:07 - Fiberglass Reinforced 3D Printed Parts 6:04 - Fiberglass Wing Segment 9:30 - Post-Processing 10:36 - Post-Processing: Wrap 12:20 - Gel-Coat a 3D Printed Part? 13:00 - Design Limitations 14:46 - Fiberglass vs Carbon Fiber 15:46 - Fiberglass Weight 17:25 - CF Blocks/Weakens Radio Signals 18:39 - Cost Comparison 21:40 - 3D Printing a Low-Cost Mould 23:36 - Low-Cost Composite Mould for Startups 27:37 - Cost of Materials: ~$330/sq.m. 31:42 - Weight of Materials 32:58 - Wrapping up