| Summary: | The aim of this thesis is to investigate which manufacturing process and material that are suitable and most cost-effective when manufacturing a drone shell and similar products. This has been done by looking at which manufacturing methods and materials that is most suited when manufacturing a drone shell, and then study which one of these is the most cost-effective. Injection molding, vacuum forming, high pressure die casting and the additive manufacturing methods fused deposition modeling and selective laser sintering are the chosen methods. By study how the cost of a drone shell varies depending on the production volume, FDM and injection molding was considered the most cost-effective alternatives for small- and larger volumes. The most cost-effective material for each of the manufacturing methods that has been investigated has been chosen by looking at the cost per kilogram for each of the materials. Polypropylene, High density polyethylene and Polyoximetylene are the polymers that meet the requirements for a drone shell and they also obtain a low cost per kilogram. The same goes for the two metals, aluminum and magnesium that can be used for high pressure die casting and selective laser sintering. The thermoplastic, polypropylene was considered the most cost-effective for injection molding and fused deposition modeling. The original drone shell has been optimized by looking at design guidelines for the two manufacturing processes. The thesis only shows an estimation of the cost per unit for different production rates when manufacture the drone shell but it clearly shows at which volume each of these methods become cost-effective.
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