Fabrication of Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Using Rapid Prototyping and Rapid Tooling

This project is about choosing the best manufacturing process in order to fabricate the body structure design of the Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (MUAV) previous designed by Mohd Anuar bin Sulaiman(2009). The size of the model is 3” X 5” and the proposed material is Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) which is Amorphous Thermoplastic Blend. There are several types of fabrication processes were studied such as Rapid Prototyping, Rapid Tooling, Conventional Lathe Machining, and Fiber Glass Layout. Based on the selected techniques the prototype was developed. The casing material was changed from ABS to fiber glass with epoxy layer due to availability problem. The model was fabricated and tested in the wind tunnel to study its aerodynamic characteristics in term of the drag force, lift, and also pitch. Based on the experimental data, the drag coefficient determined. Based on calculation, the drag coefficient of the MUAV is 0.1567.