Case Study: Finger Flyer achieves rapid launch of its finger-controlled drone with Protolabs custom injection molding

Finger Flyer Puts Drone Technology at Your Fingertips

Finger Flyer, founded by Georgia Tech student Jacob Parker, developed the Finger Flyer Hoverboard — a tiny quadcopter controlled by a patented fingerport — but ran into manufacturability and material-selection problems (fillets, undercuts, draft issues and matching colors). To get the design production-ready, Finger Flyer turned to injection molding expertise from Protolabs.

Protolabs provided iterative design reviews, helped narrow material choices (with input from supplier Avient), prototyped multiple injection-molded options, finalized gate/ejector layouts, and produced more than 1,000 end-use molded parts (frame/top/propeller guards and fingerport in glass-fiber Nylon 66) with a 10-day lead time. The timely parts from Protolabs enabled Finger Flyer to launch its website, start fulfilling global orders, and move the product into production.

Finger Flyer