Look, I\u2019ve just done it!<\/p>\n
One reason for this (and a persistent headache for marketers in the tech sector) is that if your product or solution is giving your customers a competitive edge, they\u2019re not likely to want to share their secret sauce. Indeed, for every captivating case study<\/a> I\u2019ve come across, there are dozens of others that I can\u2019t talk about without violating someone\u2019s NDA.<\/p>\n So, what\u2019s a humble senior editor to do?<\/p>\n Go straight to the source, of course!<\/p>\n I\u2019d seen several recent announcements from major players referencing Beehive Industries<\/a>, so I reached out to the company to learn more about how it\u2019s using AM to gain an edge in defense manufacturing. I ended up sitting down with Gordie Follin, the company\u2019s Chief Product Officer and an engineer with decades of experience in aerospace.<\/p>\n From GE to Beehive<\/p>\n After more than twenty years spent with industry titans, including GE Aerospace<\/a> and Pratt & Whitney<\/a>, Follin was no stranger to AM at scale. His time with GE included work on what he believes is the most additively enabled FAA-certified aircraft engine: the Catalyst<\/a>. But FAA certification, as Follin acknowledges, is a recurring challenge for AM in production.<\/p>\n It\u2019s one thing to certify a single-use application on a drone, but certifying a critical part for a manned aircraft is a considerably higher bar to clear. That\u2019s why, when Follin left GE five years ago to join Beehive, defense wasn\u2019t the latter company\u2019s sole focus. The team looked at industrial gas turbines, solid and liquid rockets, even dental and medical devices. But, as Follin tells it, the numbers pointed to aerospace and defense as the best option.<\/p>\n \u201cAdditive allows you to optimize performance, weight, cost, and schedule,\u201d Follin explains. \u201cNormally, you have to pick two of those four things, but additive allows you to potentially go after all of them without sacrificing the others.\u201d More importantly, if you look at where those trade-offs matter most, aerospace and defense come out on top.<\/p>\n From there, Beehive\u2019s focus narrowed further to unmanned systems, a decision that dramatically simplifies the qualification process and lets the company move at an iterative pace that would be inconceivable in a manned aircraft program.<\/p>\n From demonstrator to Frenzy<\/p>\n As so often happens, Beehive\u2019s flagship product\u2014the Frenzy turbojet engine\u2014wasn\u2019t its first. Initially inspired in part by the X-61 Gremlin<\/a>, Beehive built several demonstrator engines and tested them, which Follin says not only served as an important learning experience, but also helped the young company gain credibility.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of startups say they\u2019re going to do stuff, but the truth is that a lot of them don\u2019t,\u201d he explains. \u201cBuilding that engine on our own and taking it to customers really opened doors for us.\u201d<\/p>\n From those early conversations with customers, Beehive identified a market opportunity in a smaller engine class, driven by funding opportunities from programs such as the Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) and the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM). But while customers expressed enthusiasm for what Beehive was proposing, Follin says there was also concern that the company was too late to compete:<\/p>\n \u201cThree years ago, they were saying, \u2018We need something in three years but nobody can develop an engine that fast.\u2019 But for the very first engine we built, we went from a clean sheet to a first engine test in seven months.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Frenzy engine continued to advance\u2014even performing well at high altitudes where small engines can struggle\u2014the defense sector\u2019s interest in Beehive Industries grew commensurately.<\/p>\n Additive manufacturing at Beehive Industries<\/p>\n At its inception, Beehive Industries was like many AM job shops: 3D printing parts for other industries on demand. In fact, the company still produces parts for the power generation industry, as well as for others in aerospace and defense. Moreover, while some of those parts are 3D printed directly using powder bed fusion, others are made via additive casting.<\/p>\n Rather than going through the traditional, multi-step wax-pattern process for casting turbine airfoils or fuel nozzles, Beehive 3D prints ceramic molds directly. As a result, Follin says they can deliver those cast parts in a fraction of the time needed for a conventional casting house. The company has also recently added metal pouring capabilities, giving Beehive the ability to make Frenzy engines either via AM or traditional casting, depending on which makes more sense as production scales.<\/p>\n According to Follin, the cast and printed units perform the same; the real differentiator is the unit cost from external vendors. \u201cRight now, whether we print a turbine or cast a turbine, it costs us about the same,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut the reason why it\u2019s internally cost-neutral is because we\u2019re not paying for any of the ceramic tooling or investment casting; if we were to buy a cast turbine from someone else, that\u2019s going to be much more expensive than printing it ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n From a design perspective, Beehive has fully embraced design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), with engines built from an additive-first mindset. The result, says Follin, is that Frenzy doesn\u2019t look like a conventional engine. \u201cIf we made that engine conventionally, it would probably be 400 parts,\u201d he explains. \u201cOur engine, including every bolt and washer, is like 40 parts. The turbomachinery is five parts, and that would normally be 200.\u201d In short, Frenzy epitomizes the part-consolidation benefits that AM boosters have been touting for years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a center frame in the middle of the engine that has the diffuser from the compressor, the combustor case, the combustor liner, the bearing housings, the stage-one nozzle for the turbine, the fuel nozzles, and the fuel manifold,\u201d Follin says. \u201cAll this is printed into this one part, which you could never make conventionally. It\u2019s a beautiful part. If you\u2019re an engineering geek, you\u2019d say it should be in MoMA one day.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, Beehive\u2019s experience with AM means that the company\u2019s engineers understand where and how to make trade-offs in operating efficiency. For example, rather than chasing efficiency by reducing the surface roughness of printed airfoils, Frenzy gets its efficiency by eliminating leakage paths and using more aerodynamic designs.<\/p>\n Of course, that\u2019s not to say that AM has replaced machining entirely at Beehive. In cases where tolerances are extremely tight or stresses are extremely high\u2014such as turbine blade tips or shaft interfaces, respectively\u2014machining is still the best option. Follin is adamant, however, that printing a part to near net shape and then machining the whole thing to finish it is not the way to go. This is another reason Beehive\u2019s focus on small engines for one-way trips pairs well with AM: those engines don\u2019t need the same level of efficiency as engines that fly for thousands of hours. For this application, the gains from AM are impressive:<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, when we compare our engine to a conventionally made alternative, we\u2019re 20-30% more efficient,\u201d says Follin.<\/p>\n Challenges and the China question<\/p>\n Beehive Industries has been growing rapidly, hitting numerous important milestones in the last few years. While that\u2019s undoubtedly a good thing for the company, it can also create novel challenges, the most significant of which is scaling. From people to facilities to production rates, a growing business needs to be able to scale up smoothly or risk becoming bogged down in bureaucracy and technical debt. One of the ways Beehive prepared for this was through what Follin calls manufacturing demonstrations, in which Beehive practiced printing a lot of engines in a limited amount of time\u2014just one or two weeks\u2014to prepare for the planned production ramp.<\/p>\n And now the real scaling is starting: Beehive expects to make hundreds of engines this year, several thousand in 2027, and perhaps as many as 10,000 the year after that. \u201cWe\u2019re shipping multiple engineers per day at this point,\u201d Follin says.<\/p>\n On the people front, Beehive Industries is looking for engineers<\/a> with industry experience rather than those fresh out of school. \u201cGenerally, the people we hire are very strong in additive manufacturing, jet engines, or both,\u201d Follin explains. That means drawing talent not only from aviation but also the space industry, industrial gas turbines, and other fields that nurture additive expertise. \u201cWith additive, the line between manufacturing and engineering is essentially zero,\u201d Follin says. That\u2019s one of the reasons the company involves machinists in its design reviews: to avoid falling into the trap of designing parts that can\u2019t actually be made.<\/p>\n One last question I had to ask was about China. I\u2019ve had a theory for a while now<\/a> that the growth of AM in defense is being driven, at least in part, by the pressure of competition from Chinese additive OEMs, such as BLT<\/a> and Farsoon<\/a>. I asked Follin directly whether Beehive Industries would ever consider using a BLT or Farsoon printer, and his answer was unequivocal:<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, the question is less about the technical capability of the printer and more about data security. We work on military applications, so we will continue to use components manufactured in the United States or allied countries. There are ways information can leak when someone is servicing your printer, so we\u2019re very careful about that. We won\u2019t consider Chinese printers at this point because of what we\u2019re working on. If we were printing jewelry, maybe that would be fine, but we\u2019re not. The application shapes our process as much as anything.\u201d<\/p>\n AM for defense done right<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine a better example of what AM can do for defense than Beehive Industries. From its design process to its products to its approach to production, this is a company with 3D printing encoded in its DNA. Indeed, I\u2019d go so far as to say that Beehive Industries wouldn\u2019t exist in its current form without the enablement of additive technologies. If you\u2019re wondering what the future of manufacturing in the defense sector more generally looks like, this is it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beehive Industries Chief Product Officer talks drones, additive casting, and the challenge of scaling up. It\u2019s no secret…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4756,4757,14,4758,688,2225],"class_list":["post-7920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-beehive-industries","tag-blt","tag-defence-industry","tag-farsoon","tag-ge-aerospace","tag-pratt-whitney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Gordie-Follin-1024x782.png\")
Beehive Industries Chief Product Officer, Gordie Follin. (IMAGE: Beehive Industries.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Frenzy-Engine-Evolution-from-First-Engine-L-through-to-Final-Engine-R-1024x683.jpg\")
Evolution of the Frenzy engine, from the first engine (L) to the final design (R). (IMAGE: Beehive Industries.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Beehive-Industries-GIF.gif\")
(IMAGE: Beehive Industries.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Frenzy-Profile-View-2-1024x683.jpg\")
The Frenzy engine. (IMAGE: Beehive Industries.)<\/p>\n