Up &Away
Additive Manufacturing has made great strides forward since
it fi rst arrived on the scene. For Peter Opdam, co-founder
of Clogworks Technologies, it has allowed huge fl ights of
imagination. grounded him long
enough to understand how he applies this technology in the
design of his ‘Dark Matter’ drones
Engineering Designer: Where do you
start from when designing a drone?
Peter Opdam, Clogworks
Technologies: For me, a new design
always starts with asking myself lots of
questions. For example: What is the use
of this product? What would a carefully
designed, and precision engineered drone
look like? What is the optimal component
count? How do all components
interconnect? How can I manufacture
everything with the equipment available to
myself? How would the product be used
by the end-user? Whilst I’m asking myself
all these questions, I start visualising the
product, all individual components down
to every minute detail in my mind. This
is very much like looking at the entire
product in CAD design software. By the
time I start drawing things out in CAD,
I already know how everything sticks
together. It’s just that I can then show
the product to other people and get their
opinion before progressing.
ED: What are the essential elements
involved in the design process?
PO: There are many essential elements
that are requirements for our Dark Matter
products, the obvious one being ight
performance. But it goes much further
than that. When I rst started designing
the Dark Matter hX, I wanted the drone
not only to have great ight performance,
but also be weather-resistant, modular,
ruggedised, strong, easily transportable,
maintenance-friendly – and the list goes
on. I basically view the design of our
products as a very large equation, with
lots of variables, that needs to be solved
and hold true. Only when everything works
in harmony can the end user expect a
true plug-n-play user-friendly solution.
ED: Tell us about how the design
depends on the particular role you
want a drone to perform
PO: The end-user application is super
important, of course, and a crucial part of
the design process. Usually, an enterprise
drone user uses his/her aircraft for a
number of applications and sometimes
different applications require different
drones. This is where the true modularity
of Dark Matter comes in – it allows us
to design add-on options that optimise
the aircraft for particular applications, so
the end user can assemble the optimal
con guration for his or her application
on the day. One obvious thing is the
payload possibilities, but there are other
Peter Opdam, with one of
his ‘Dark Matter’ drones.
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