Valkyrie is a 250-pound combat robot
for the TV show Battlebots on Discovery and Science Channel
We are a stealth jet
inspired body and an undercutter blade
The blade spins at 250 miles an hour, and the
blade itself weighs about 65 pounds
We have a very tricky aesthetic
So one of the
first things that Markforged helped us do was
quickly prototype out of printed
materials, the structure and frame rails
to get the armor looking exactly how we
wanted
Our team is comprised of five hardware engineers
All based in the Boston area
We are all younger engineers
and so we really find the iterative
design has driven Valkyrie to the success we've seen so far
Figuring out
how a design will be flawless is difficult
So that's why we're on...
Can't
even count how many iterations of just like
different parts of the robot or
different modules that we just changed up
This part is the third version that
holds in our weapon motor
We've been able to iterate down to be half the weight of what it used to be
We can really dial in and keep things as
minimal as possible
And keep it lightweight
We've used them for
prototyping, tooling, and fixturing
Without having Marforged, we would have
way too high of machining costs
There are these shapes that would take days to machine
but you're able to print in maybe a day
For the season we've printed
over a hundred different parts
The materials are right up our alley for
high-strength, high-performance
We have both Onyx as well as stainless steel printed parts
Once we have Valkyrie fully assembled
We're looking at 40 to
50 parts that will be used in battle
I think a lot of people just don't think
that there are strong 3D printed materials
So being able to point out
where a bunch of our stainless pieces
took a beating and just survived
was really a great way to send home the quality of what Markforged has
Having Markforged has really made it so
We're not only saving a lot of money on
producing these parts
But we're also saving a ton of time
The future of manufacturing looks fantastic
I think that this is going to change the way that things are made or engineered
