Skip to navigation

Customer Story – Landing Gear for Impact Resistance

Impact Resistance & the Mark One

Ocean Alliance is an organization dedicated to research on “…whales and ocean life relating particularly to toxicology, behavior, bioacoustics, and genetics“. Human activity is the cause of tens of thousands of whale deaths each year. Ocean Alliance’s research will help us better understand and document what our activities are doing to the whales and their habitat, so that one day we might be able to mitigate the problem.

Last summer, they launched a Kickstarter Campaign to raise money for Snotbot – a quadcopter Ocean Alliance could use to collect samples from the whales without harming or harassing the animals. With the help of Patrick Stewart, they successfully raised money for their Snotbot project. Check out the video with Patrick Stewart at the end of the post!

Ocean Alliance partnered with Olin College of Engineering to help design and create the Snotbot. The Snotbot’s objective is to hover over whales breaching the ocean’s surface and collect samples of the blow (or snot) exhaled from the whales’ lungs.

The Snotbot drones use 3D printed landing gear for impact resistance.
The Snotbot team at Olin College with Different Design Iterations of the Snotbot

One of the biggest challenges the Snotbot had was landings. The first iterations of the Snotbot were not holding up to the unpredictable and volatile landings on a boat afloat in the ocean. Despite being made of composite lay-ups, with each test, the landing gear would invariably shatter and break.

The 3D printed landing gear for the Snotbot.
Close Up of the Snotbot Landing Gear

Olin College printed the landing gear in less than a day for a material cost of $34.79. The question is. Did it work? Read the full Snotbot case study to find out! Or watch the video below:

Interested in seeing the Mark Two in action? Request a Demo today.

All of the blogs and the information contained within those blogs are copyright by Markforged, Inc. and may not be copied, modified, or adopted in any way without our written permission. Our blogs may contain our service marks or trademarks, as well as of those our affiliates. Your use of our blogs does not constitute any right or license for you to use our service marks or trademarks without our prior permission. Markforged Information provided in our blogs should not be considered professional advice. We are under no obligation to update or revise blogs based on new information, subsequent events, or otherwise.

不错过任何一篇文章

订阅以在您的收件箱中获取新的 Markforged 内容