From DIY drones to new frontiers of drone design with 3D printing.

Posted by FIT THAI on January 27, 2026

The drone market continues to grow: forecasts indicate the drone market will expand from $14 billion in 2018 to over $43 billion in 2024. To keep pace with this rapid industry growth, rapid innovation is key to competitive success, and 3D printing is ideally suited to support this.

As the use cases for drones, both professional and hobbyist, continue to expand—from FPV racing to disaster relief, cargo transport, and reconnaissance—3D printing will play an increasingly dominant role in producing drones capable of delivering new levels of performance.

3D printing shortens product development time, lowers production costs, and opens up opportunities for designers and manufacturers to take more risks with cutting-edge 3D-printed drone designs, unlocking the potential for new applications of the technology.

Read on to learn how 3D printing is used to create drones, from design to manufacturing, and learn how to build your own 3D-printed DIY drone.

Rapidly prototyping drones using 3D printing.

With 3D printing, designers don't need to spend hours analyzing the risks and potential drawbacks of new design features. High-resolution 3D printers can quickly produce new prototypes for testing with minimal waste. Drone manufacturers can produce interchangeable modules with high geometric precision, eliminating the need for expensive and time-consuming molds.

In producing the MRB-1, shown above, Marble used Formlabs printers to create a custom-made inventory of parts for their drone, including engine housings, subwings, and even smaller models to help visualize the final product.

The use of 3D printing in the process helps reduce production time, as creating new parts takes only a few hours. For example, the MRB-1 drone took just four weeks from initial design concept to a functional prototype.

3D printing not only offers advantages in terms of design freedom and time savings, but it can also save a significant amount of money. The use of easily shareable and editable CAD files during the design phase also simplifies design iterations.

This makes taking risks and innovating in drone design more cost-effective. During the development of their own drones, the U.S. Marine Corps found that the process of manufacturing one drone cost approximately $600, excluding the cost of the printer. This compares to the cost of a ready-made Raven drone, which could cost the Marines up to $30,000.

ORQA produced their premium One FPV goggles by prototyping parts on a Formlabs 3D printer to perfect the design. These cutting-edge goggles are designed for drone racing, freestyle flying, and FPV simulation.

Custom 3D printed drone spare parts.

Those who design and build drones professionally or in their spare time know that repairing or replacing parts is difficult (and expensive). Inexperienced pilots, inclement weather, or obstructing branches often lead to crashes that can cause costly damage to the drone.

3D printing has made it easier to manufacture drone spare parts. In the case of the Marine Corps, replacing a damaged wing section of a high-performance drone, which originally cost $8,000, can now be done at a cost of only about 0.1% of that price.

New frontiers in drone design.

While many drones utilize the popular quadcopter design, the flexibility of 3D printing opens up vast possibilities for developers to create far more ambitious designs, leaving room for complete imagination.

The Zelator UAV, winner of the 2016 Airbus Cargo Drone Challenge, is optimized for transporting small cargo, particularly medical supplies, to remote areas. Featuring a fixed-wing design, the Zelator's creators used 3D printing to create a structure strong enough to withstand harsh weather conditions and light enough (under 25 kg) to operate in challenging environments.

Yuki Ogasawara and Ryo Kumeda's X VEIN is an inventively designed and 3D-printed quadcopter drone intended as a "rescue drone." Optimized for disaster relief operations, the X VEIN features extended flight times, a reinforced structure, and propeller guards to protect against collision damage. All these features are integrated into a lattice-frame quadcopter body constructed using 3D printing.

The mesh structure design of X VEIN can only be produced through 3D printing.

The high level of customization in drone design, the complexity of mesh structures, and the freedom to adjust density within generative CAD software are all only possible thanks to the capabilities of additive manufacturing technology.

While many manufacturers are experimenting with large drones, there's also creative design on the other side of the scale. For example, the University of Pennsylvania's (UPenn) Piccolissimo is one of the smallest drones ever produced.

UPenn's Piccolissimo is one of the smallest drones ever produced, with a diameter of 24.26 millimeters and weighing just 2.5 grams.

With its single-piece propeller and structure, Piccolissimo is ideal for extreme environments. Its tiny size (24.26 mm diameter) and extremely light weight (just 2.5 grams) are achieved using only 3D-printed parts. This weight and size make this miniature drone perfectly suited for working in unstable nuclear reactors or for reconnaissance in confined or remote areas—tasks that humans or larger drones cannot perform.

Piccolissimo also signals a promising future use case for 3D printing and swarm robotics. Manufacturers could use 3D printing to create tools like Piccolissimo for swarm robotics tasks such as search and rescue missions. Let's just hope this technology is used for good, and not like that famous episode of Black Mirror.

How to build your own 3D printed drone.

With 3D printing, it's possible to produce most parts needed to build a drone or quadcopter, excluding electronics. 3D-printed drone parts might include the fuselage, additional protective shells for the frame, propellers, landing gear, motor mounts, accessory mounts (such as scanners, cameras, sensors, or other useful devices), and housings for the drone's remote and power source.

When building your own DIY drone, you can choose from a wide variety of ready-made open-source designs, such as OpenRC's 3D-printable quadcopter design featured on the cover of this article. Databases of 3D models and communities like Pinshape also offer a diverse selection of 3D-printable drone designs and accessories. Furthermore, 3D modeling individual parts or accessories opens up limitless possibilities for customizing your drone design for specific applications. Online communities like RC Groups, DIY Drones, and of course Reddit can also provide ample support and inspiration.

For printing your drone, you can utilize any common plastic 3D printing technology, including Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), or Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), depending on your needs.

Among these three technologies, SLA 3D printing offers the ideal balance between high precision and material versatility. Given the nature of drone applications, we recommend choosing materials capable of withstanding compression, stretching, bending, and impact without breaking, such as tough and durable SLA resins.