Student, Chief of Manufacturing and Airframe Engineer: Daniel on DroneTeam Twente

Every year, DroneTeam Twente competes in the UAS Challenge in the United Kingdom, where student teams from all over the world design and fly fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. This year, the challenge includes releasing a liquid payload, which adds a whole new layer of complexity to the design.

As Chief of Manufacturing, I’m basically the 3D-printer mechanic. People come to me for printing questions, slicer issues, or broken printers. If something needs to be printed or fixed, it usually ends up with me.

Alongside that, I do my work as an airframe engineer; I am responsible for improving how we manufacture our components. One of the biggest challenges this year is producing our own carbon fibre tubes. Other than my minor, I’ve been involved in designing and building the necessary equipment we need to roll the tubes in the office, which required learning things outside of my comfort zone. For example, for the carbon fibre tubes, I had to design custom electronics and a printed circuit board (PCB). This was completely new to me, but with help from our electrical team, we managed to design a circuit that’s now being implemented.

Next to my full-time role as an airframe engineer and Chief of Manufacturing, I’m also doing my minor project in the DroneTeam. As a third-year Mechanical Engineering student, you have the choice to do your minor period within a student team, which is what I have been doing for the past two modules.

I’m developing a 3D-printing filament welder, with the aim of proving that welded filament is just as strong as regular filament. In 3D-printing, partially used spools often go to waste. But with this method, you can join leftover pieces of filament and use every last bit. If we can show it’s mechanically sound, it could drastically reduce waste. Not just for DroneTeam, but for anyone using 3D-printing.

When part of a student team, you constantly see the challenges faced by aerodynamics, electronics, and management; a perspective that I didn’t fully experience during my studies. Group projects come close, but they’re not the same. During courses, people are sometimes just trying to pass, to deliver the minimally viable product. Within the DroneTeam, we want to build something great. That shared motivation does make a difference.

While the technical learning has been valuable, my biggest growth has been personal. Technically, it’s more about putting into practice what we’ve learned in classes before, which has been a lot more insightful and valuable than I thought it would be. But personally, you learn how to communicate, work in larger teams, and deal with responsibility, and that’s something you can’t learn from lectures.

Seeing the first prototype fly. We spent months designing, simulating, and discussing everything in theory, and it was just a really cool experience to see our prototype come to life.

Yes, with the right approach. A lot of people join through their minor projects, which is what I did as well. As a result, I had a great first semester, working with the team full-time on the drone and my minor project. And going forward, I will be balancing DroneTeam alongside modules 11 and 12, which I think is very doable.

Doing this before your third year might be a bit trickier, though. One of the requirements to join aerodynamics specifically was to have taken a fluids and heat transfer class, though I don’t think what we learned directly applies to what the aerodynamics subteam is doing. But it comes down to the fact that you shouldn’t underestimate the first year of Mechanical Engineering. You have fewer classes than in your third year, but the classes are a lot heavier, and it’s a lot of responsibility. So that’s important to note if you want to apply for a student team.

But, part-timers still make great contributions to the team. If you want to join alongside your full-time study, then that is an extracurricular activity at that point. It’ll take up some of your personal time, around eight hours a week, but it can absolutely be done.

Joining a student team next to your studies is very rewarding, although there may always be some moments of doubt. Sometimes you wonder if everyone is putting in the same effort as you are. But you can always shift your mindset and learn to focus on personal growth and what you can get out of the experience. That makes it a lot more rewarding.

Not at all! Anyone motivated enough can join. If you have skills in drones at all, that’s a plus. You can deliver a lot of value to the team with just 3D printing, for example. But you can also join as someone who doesn't have any knowledge in those areas and work on different parts, like airframe engineering, aerodynamics or electrical engineering, and pick up on those other skills if you want to, which I think are just as valuable. Or, you know, if it’s unfamiliar, there will always be a chief of manufacturing who can do the 3D printing for you. 😉

Just give it a shot. You never know what might happen, even if you don’t have much experience in 3D printing or drones. As we talked about before, you can contribute and learn a lot, and just spend time with a lot of cool people and learn a bunch of new skills!