Faster, farther, altitude flight – thanks to PROTIQ

Flying like Iron Man can – there’s no way it could happen? We see it differently. Here at PROTIQ, no idea is too far-fetched for us – so it was a pleasure for us to help British innovator and former Marine Richard Browning fulfill his dream of flight.

At this year’s TED innovation conference in Vancouver, Browning presented his functional “Daedalus” flight suit – constructed out of a reinforced exoskeleton equipped with six small jet engines. He went through months of trial and error before his vision “took flight”. “Browning first put his ideas down on paper in the form of simple pencil sketches, then turned them into digital 3D objects. To test how they functioned, he needed prototypes – and, to suit his ambitious timeframe, he needed them yesterday,” Gärtner says, recalling his initial contact with Browning. “With his charisma and energy, he swept us along for the ride. Of course we provided our 3D service to support this unique, visionary project.”

Using selective laser sintering (SLS), we first produced plastic prototypes for Browning – of the electronics housing for the batteries on his chest and for the wing pieces on his arms. Only a few days after he’d sent us the data, he was able to test the objects and fine-tune the design of his suit – to perfection! Browning himself is clearly impressed by the speed with which PROTIQ was able to produce his parts. He has only good things to say about the dynamic collaborative process – “Ridiculously fast!” – and admits: “Without PROTIQ, it wouldn’t have been possible to turn this project into reality so fast.”

The printed parts have already passed the hardness test – Browning has successfully used them to fly. The ready-to-use components aren’t made of plastic anymore, however, but rather of heavy-duty yet light aluminum which we processed using the SLM (selective laser melting) process.

At the moment, the flight suit is the only product from Browning’s start-up Gravity, which itself is a pioneer in an utterly new category of air travel. According to its developer, the suit can reach a flight speed of up to 300 km/h at an altitude of several hundred meters. For safety reasons, however, Browning has only used his suit to float just above the ground.

We’re already very excited to learn if a whole series will follow the functioning flight-suit prototype, and would love to continue assisting Browning in reaching higher altitudes!

Do you also have an unusual idea that you’d like to transform into reality with us? Visionaries and people with imagination are welcome to talk to us at any time.