Dufour Aerospace selects Volz Servos as partner for Aero2

Dufour Aero­space has select­ed Ger­man electro­mechan­i­cal actu­a­tor man­u­fac­tur­er Volz Ser­vos as sup­pli­er for the uncrewed tilt-wing air­craft Aero2 to sup­ply the project with the DA 26‑D as well as the DA 15‑T.

The ful­ly redun­dant DA 26‑D is made for appli­ca­tions with high reli­a­bil­i­ty demands such as steer­ing sur­faces, with all major com­po­nents like elec­tric motors, con­trol and com­mu­ni­ca­tion elec­tron­ics, and pow­er sup­ply. The posi­tion sen­sor fea­tures a three-chan­nel design (for 2 out of 3 vot­ing).

The throt­tle ser­vo DA 15‑T in the Suter engine of the Aero2 is a com­pact fly-by-wire actu­a­tor for direct instal­la­tion on the throt­tle valve shaft of com­bus­tion engines that elim­i­nates the need for the rud­der link­age and bow­den cables, short­ens the instal­la­tion time, and min­imis­es the instal­la­tion space and over­all weight.

Simon Ben­drey, head of design at Dufour Aero­space, said: “Volz is an indus­try leader in UAS actu­a­tion sys­tems and offers a suite of robust and durable ser­vos which Dufour are hap­py to utilise on its air­craft.

“For the ele­va­tor specif­i­cal­ly, Dufour requires full pow­er and con­trol redun­dan­cy, which is pro­vid­ed by the Volz DA 26‑D unit. We look for­ward to a long rela­tion­ship with Volz on the sup­ply of these key sys­tem com­po­nents to our air­craft.”

Volz direc­tor of sales and busi­ness devel­op­ment Felix Thun added: “The Dufour Aero2 is a very excit­ing and promis­ing project with its inge­nious com­bi­na­tion of heli­copter and aero­plane fea­tures.

“The demand for such appli­ca­tions in the car­go mar­ket is huge and the future is aus­pi­cious. There­fore, we at Volz are proud to be select­ed as sup­pli­er for this new drone and look for­ward to work­ing with Dufour in the years to come.”
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‍Volz Ser­vos is a pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny which has been design­ing and pro­duc­ing advanced actu­a­tors in Ger­many since 1983, used in the avi­a­tion, aero­space, robot­ic, auto­mo­tive and med­ical indus­tries. They are used on sev­er­al glob­al UAV appli­ca­tions meet­ing per­for­mance, reli­a­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty require­ments that can­not be met with off-the-shelf remote con­trol air­craft ser­vos.

A week ago, Dufour Aero­space select­ed 9T Labs as a sup­pli­er for struc­tur­al com­pos­ite con­nec­tors such as brack­ets and hinges of the uncrewed tilt-wing air­craft Aero2, using parts man­u­fac­tured with inno­v­a­tive addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment and advanced post pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy to help fur­ther reduce the weight of the Aero2.

Dufour Aero­space and 9T Labs col­lab­o­rate on Aero2 struc­tur­al com­pos­ite con­nec­tors