Case Study: Leptron achieves 59% cost savings and 43% faster UAV development with Stratasys FDM

FDM Reduces the Time and Cost Required to Develop Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Leptron, a developer of the lightweight RDASS 4 unmanned aerial vehicle for military, law enforcement and civilian use, needed to produce eight variations of complex, crash‑worthy fuselage components quickly and affordably to beat competitors to market. Traditional injection molding would have required about $250,000 and 14 months for tooling, so Leptron turned to Stratasys’ Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology and a Stratasys Dimension 3D Printer to meet mechanical requirements and enable rapid iteration.

Stratasys’ FDM solution allowed Leptron to print end‑use parts (core components in ~48 hours, smaller parts in ~6 hours), make roughly 200 design changes (each part revised at least four times), and build prototypes plus eight production craft in eight months for about $100–103K. Using Stratasys reduced cost by $147,000 (59%) and cut lead time by six months (43%) compared with injection molding, while eliminating the need for a machine shop and enabling quick functional testing and repairs.

Leptron

John Oakley

Chief Executive Officer