ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OF COMPOSITE TOOLING IN RPAV PRODUCTION

Conventional manufacturing technology of laminated composite structures are currently laminated in a moulding tool obtained by a mechanical shaving process removal of metallic or polymeric material. The use of additive manufacturing (AM) can lead to numerous advantages either in terms of time and costs saving or, in the possibility of increasing the mould complexity and customization. The paper presents the use of 3D printing for the manufacturing of a moulding tool to be used for the lamination of composite items in Remotely Piloted Aircrafts (RPAV). The first case presented concerns the realization of a 1:8 scaled Replica of the S55X. The second example refers to the idea of building a 3D flying RPAV in 1:7 scale starting from a 1:48 static model of YF 23 from McDonnell Douglas.