America Makes Debuts 3D Printing for Drones Program to Give High School Students Hands‑On Manufacturing Experience

America Makes launched a nationwide 3D Printing for Drones initiative aimed at high school students. The program will be offered in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Alabama and California and is timed to coincide with National Manufacturing Day.

Sessions run for a half day and use a Design + Build + Fly format. The curriculum brings together three instructional strands:

• Design thinking: students work through real scenarios such as last‑mile delivery, field repair and constraints tied to weight and cost. These exercises frame engineering tradeoffs rather than just mechanics of building.
• Additive manufacturing: students prototype and develop functional 3D‑printed drone components, learning how manufacturability and material choices affect performance and reliability.
• Drone technology: learners integrate printed parts with airframes, study flight fundamentals, plan payloads and missions, and run reliability testing.

Participants will move between short design exercises, hands‑on prototyping and flight practice. Typical session activities include build projects, mentor‑led coaching, safety lessons, and flight instruction. Challenges emphasize system‑level thinking — for example, how a heavier printed part affects battery life and mission endurance, or how a design change can simplify manufacture without compromising reliability.

Ed Herderick, education and workforce development director at America Makes, said: "Manufacturing Day provides an important opportunity to introduce the next generation to the technologies, skills and career opportunities shaping the future of American manufacturing. This programming brings together state‑of‑the‑art 3D printing with drone competition in an exciting, kinetic way that engages learners and will keep growing momentum in the advanced manufacturing industry."

High schools and career and technical education programs that want a short, hands‑on introduction to additive manufacturing and drone systems will find this format useful. The half‑day structure fits into single‑day events like Manufacturing Day and can serve as a prototype for longer classroom modules or extracurricular clubs.

• Use the program to introduce system tradeoffs (weight vs battery life, manufacturability vs reliability) rather than only component skills.
• Combine mentor support and safety lessons with clear mission goals to keep sessions focused and safe.
• Leverage the free curriculum and request an access code to adapt materials for repeatable classroom use.

Drones initiative is a compact, hands‑on program designed to give students concrete experience in additive manufacturing and drone engineering while highlighting career pathways in advanced manufacturing.