General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), a leading manufacturer of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), radars, electro-optics and related mission systems, is partnering with Divergent Technologies to harness its additive manufacturing capability.
Divergent will implement a full digital manufacturing process for GA-ASI’s products, and is working with GA-ASI to apply the Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS) to fabricate and assemble vehicle structures. It follows Divergent Technologies' Kevin Czinger telling TCT last year the company had a play in the aerospace sector, in addition to automotive.
“Throughout our 30 years of designing and developing advanced UAS, GA-ASI has been focused on implementing new capabilities into our manufacturing process,” said GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “We’re working with Divergent to integrate their technology as part of our Additive Design and Manufacturing Center of Excellence strategy, with the goal of optimising our design and manufacturing processes and providing next generation UAS at the lowest cost.”
GA-ASI began a joint development program with Divergent in 2022, which led to stronger strategic partnership on multiple platforms. GA-ASI’s additive manufacturing, aircraft integrity, material and design engineering teams are working with Divergent to adapt and qualify its automobile industry technology to GA-ASI’s aircraft production.
“Divergent has invented the first industrial digital manufacturing system. Leveraging innovations in artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and automation, DAPS can be used to build the underlying structure for virtually any vehicle, whether land, sea, air, or space, better, faster and more cost efficiently than traditional manufacturing,” said Kevin Czinger, Founder, Lead Inventor and CEO of Divergent.
Collaboration between the two companies has already led to the completion of two projects that made up a fully integrated small UAS aerostructure. The design leveraged model-based, AI-driven and topology optimised designs. The integrated metal structure being 3D printed led to the reduction of the part count integration by over 95% while meeting weight targets according to GA-ASI.
The DAPS process inspected each printed components by creating a digital twin of the small UAS (SUAS) that was then applied to a fully automated, tool-less robotics assembly process that took less than 20 minutes to complete.
GA-ASI said this process enabled the team to go from a print-ready SUAS design to a fully assembled deliverable airframe in less than two days.
In September 2022, GA-ASI announced that it was working with long-time collaborator Conflux Technology on the design and manufacture of a new fuel oil heat exchanger (FOHE) for the MQ-9B.
