Building the Partnerships Behind ASCENT-1

Not everything that gets a drone to a competition happens on a workbench. A fair amount of it is knocking on doors and building relationships, and this week we want to document the partnerships that made ASCENT-1 possible. The first is with the Dream Realization Lab (DRL), which came on board as a sponsor and opened up its laboratories, materials, and 3D printers to the team.

That access changed how fast we could move. So much of our build comes off a print bed that lab space and printers on hand meant we could prototype and iterate without waiting in a queue for a machine to free up. Around the same time, TASNE3D joined as a sponsor with a 50% discount on 3D-printing filament — which matters more than it sounds, because we print a lot and reprint often. Cheaper filament is what lets us treat a failed part as a lesson rather than a loss, and print the next revision the same night.

Put together, these partnerships did more than trim the budget: they gave us more print hours and a lower cost per iteration, so the team could spend its own resources on the aircraft itself. Support like this is quietly one of the reasons ASCENT-1 came together as quickly as it did, and we're grateful to have DRL and TASNE3D behind the project.