As the U.S. and its allies race to secure their drone supply chains, a quiet revolution is happening inside HP’s additive manufacturing division. At the intersection of digital design, advanced materials, and scalable production, the team and some of their customers are convinced that 3D printing is no longer just a prototyping tool; it is a path to full-scale, flight-ready manufacturing.
Gino Balistreri, Global Head of Unmanned Systems for HP Additive Manufacturing, and David Mazo, Aerospace Engineering Group Lead for HP 3D Printing, are part of the dedicated drone team leading that transformation. In an interview with DRONELIFE, they discussed how additive manufacturing is enabling smarter production, lighter aircraft, and more flexible supply chains, an evolution that could permanently reshape how drones are built and delivered.
“There’s really no other way to do this right now,” says Balistreri. “The drone market is expanding too fast for traditional manufacturing to keep up.”
Rethinking the Limits of Additive Manufacturing: Beyond Small Parts
Most people still associate 3D printing with small, specialized components. HP’s additive manufacturing team is proving that the technology can go far beyond that, producing full airframes and long fixed wings ready for flight at industrial scale.
HP’s technology allows manufacturers to print a large drone system every twelve to twenty-four hours. For smaller aircraft, such as molded-chassis drone components, the throughput is even higher: thousands per day, equating to over half a million units annually.
The process produces parts faster than traditional methods, with higher precision and less waste. Because it eliminates the need for molds or support structures, engineers can optimize aerodynamic designs directly in the digital model and send them to print without retooling an entire factory.
“At first, customer leaders and engineers assume wings can’t be 3D printed,” says Mazo. “But we show them what we’ve done, and when they see it, they realize it’s not only possible, it’s scalable.”
The Weight Advantage: Lighter, Stronger, and Ready to Fly
One of HP’s most significant advantages lies in the materials used in MJF printing. The company’s high-performance thermoplastics allow for highly optimized structures that rival the strength of carbon fiber but weigh less, allowing drone makers to push new limits of endurance and payload.
“By doing an optimized wing or fuselage design, thanks to HP MJF capability to process thin walls at high speed, wings produced with HP technology can be equally functional to carbon fiber yet 30% lighter.” Mazo explains.
This weight reduction isn’t just an engineering statistic. A lighter airframe gives the UAV systems extra payload or energy capacity allowing increased flight range or payload capacity by ten to twenty percent, a critical factor for long-distance inspection or critical missions. HP’s process also allows for consistent wall thicknesses below one millimeter, which are difficult or impossible to reproduce through conventional methods and other AM technologies at scale.
Each component can be printed with precise internal geometry such as lattices, critical areas reinforcements, skin variable thickness or wiring cavities, that enhance functionality and strength while minimizing weight. The result is a more efficient flying platform that can be produced repeatedly, anywhere in the world.
From Prototype to Production in Days
In an industry that often measures development cycles in months, HP’s approach shortens that timeline to days. The ability to move from concept to flight test without retooling is one of the strongest arguments for additive manufacturing.
HP’s drone engineers decided to test that claim themselves. “About six months ago,” Mazo recalls, “we wanted to see what we could do from a design perspective. We bought several commercial drones and challenged our engineers: could they beat them on weight and assembly time?”
The team worked quickly. Within three weeks, they had a complete redesign ready for production. Using HP’s MJF printers, the new airframe was built in just four to five hours.
“The first time you design it, you learn many things you need to improve” says Mazo. “But the second time, we were ready for a flight test, and with a third iteration we had a system in final flight tests that was lighter and more scalable in production.”
They brought the prototype to a test center in Spain, where a local drone company helped pilot the aircraft. “When it lifted off,” Mazo adds, “the entire HP team was watching, we lifted vertically and started flying at speeds exceeding 100 km/h, that was our moment of proof.”
The experience demonstrated how HP’s digital process turns design into hardware in record time. Once printed, the same digital model can be shared in a secured way and replicated anywhere, enabling rapid iteration and continuous improvement.
Democratizing Drone Manufacturing
One of the most transformative aspects of additive manufacturing is its ability to lower the barriers to entry for new players. In the past, producing a drone required heavy investment in tooling, molds, and factory space. Now, startups can go from design to flight-ready prototype using HP’s production service centers without ever buying a printer.
“If someone is developing a new drone platform, they can design an airframe and have it produced,” says Balistreri. “They don’t have to start by investing in tooling or production equipment. It supports innovation.”
This approach democratizes drone manufacturing. Designers can experiment, iterate, and test before scaling. If engineering teams use HP printing technology for prototyping, they realize how the design needs to be adjusted and they can scale with the same technology, while established manufacturers can integrate 3D printing into their existing workflows to expand capacity or create specialized components.
It’s a model that encourages innovation from the ground up. Balistreri notes that from a few larger clients, they are now seeing users in the drone industry of all sizes – and from all over the world. “It wasn’t a push from us,” he says, talking about the development of the specialist drone team. “It was a pull from the industry.”
Building a Smarter Supply Chain
Beyond production speed, additive manufacturing offers a fundamental shift in logistics. Instead of relying on centralized factories and long shipping routes, companies can print parts closer to where they’re needed, an approach increasingly called embedded manufacturing.
“You can manufacture some parts centrally and others near your customer,” says Mazo. “It gives you flexibility, and it secures the supply chain.”
For dual-use applications, this distributed model is especially valuable. As some customers explore local production for mission-critical equipment, 3D printing makes it possible to replicate components on demand, anywhere in the world, with the same quality as a central facility.
By digitizing production, HP’s technology transforms the supply chain into a network rather than a hierarchy. Design files can be securely shared, materials standardized, and output verified without physical inventory or complex retooling.
“It’s as if you had an infinite number of molds,” Mazo explains. “But they’re all digital, they do not take space and modifying them cost a fraction of the mold.”
Scaling Up for Global Demand
The shift toward additive manufacturing comes at a critical time for the drone industry. As U.S. policymakers move to limit Chinese-made drones, many manufacturers are looking for ways to rebuild production capacity at home. Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine and other geopolitical flashpoints have underscored the importance of small, rapidly deployable aircraft in modern warfare.
HP’s team recognized the challenge early. “If I’m building thirty drones a month,” says Balistreri, “how am I going to fulfill an order for a hundred or a thousand? How do I keep up with design changes? That’s where this technology changes everything.”
Additive manufacturing enables companies to scale production without massive new facilities or workforces. Each printer functions as a micro-factory, capable of producing complex assemblies with minimal labor. Because the process is digital, scaling up simply means adding more printers, not more molds or machinery. For small component parts a system can produce over half a million units per year at a price that is competitive with injection molding. For large wings designed and qualified for MJF technology, hundreds of systems can be produced on each printer with very little human labor cost.
The result is an agile manufacturing system that can grow or contract with demand, making it ideal for industries like drones, where designs evolve rapidly and production runs vary from hundreds to tens of thousands.
Collaboration as a Catalyst
HP’s drone team doesn’t just supply technology; they collaborate directly with manufacturers to push boundaries. Each new partnership begins with a workshop. HP assigns a small team of engineers to work with the customer’s designers, testing materials, optimizing geometry, and reducing assembly complexity.
“When we open the doors to our facilities and connect them with our experts,” says Mazo, “they start connecting the dots. Their systems evolve every month.”
This hands-on approach has produced striking results. Companies that once printed only brackets or mounts are now exploring full airframes and control surfaces. Others, already equipped with printers, are learning how to use them more effectively for production rather than prototyping.
Balistreri says HP’s role is to guide customers toward realizing the full potential of the technology. “We’re working with our customers to help them leverage the printers to their maximum. We’re making bold claims, but they’re backed by real results.”
Smarter, Not Harder
Underlying HP’s work is a broader philosophy: build smarter, not based on labor-intensive processes. By removing tooling and manual assembly steps, additive manufacturing frees engineers to focus on design optimization rather than production constraints.
“With traditional methods, every new design might mean a new mold,” Mazo says. “Here, your molds are digital. You can change them instantly.”
The approach also supports modularity, which is key in an industry where every drone has a different mission. “In industrial factories, every robot has a different end-of-arm tool,” Mazo explains. “It’s the same for drones. Each needs to be adapted for its mission. With a modular baseline, where you can easily change the tip of the drone fuselage or the length of the wing for example, you can do that efficiently.”
HP’s lightweight, repeatable designs make that modularity practical. Instead of rigid, one-size-fits-all frames, manufacturers can create families of aircraft for inspection, delivery, or tactical applications based on a shared structural core.
“It’s not about making one perfect drone,” Balistreri says. “It’s about creating the flexibility to make any drone, anywhere.”
The Future of Agile Manufacturing
The lessons HP is applying to drones extend far beyond aviation. As global industries look to reshore production and reduce dependency on complex supply chains, additive manufacturing offers a model for distributed, resilient manufacturing ecosystems.
“You don’t need a huge factory anymore,” says Mazo. “You can manufacture smarter, with medium-size production cells anywhere in the world.”
Balistreri believes that this evolution, fueled by design freedom and manufacturing flexibility, will define the next phase of industrial production. “We’re seeing a shift from making drones to engineering systems,” he says. “As things get more digital, you need to be more agile. That’s where we’re headed.”
Engineering the Next Generation of Flight
As drone demand accelerates globally, the race to produce smarter, lighter, and more adaptable aircraft is reshaping the manufacturing landscape. HP’s additive manufacturing team stands at the center of that change, proving that digital production can achieve aerospace-grade performance while enabling agility and resilience.
In doing so, the company is not just refining how drones are built; it is redefining how innovation takes flight.
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Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.
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