--- title: "OTUS receives a Bambu Lab grant through the Let’s Make It Fund" url: https://www.voxelmatters.com/otus-receives-a-bambu-lab-grant-through-the-lets-make-it-fund/ date: 2026-07-04 modified: 2026-07-03 lang: en author: "Roksana Slusarczyk" description: "OTUS Project, the American research initiative focused on flying drones through the interiors of tornadoes, announced that it has officially received sponsorship from Bambu Lab under the Let's Make It..." categories: - "3D Printer Hardware" - "Drones/UAV" - "Money & Funding" image: https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-07-03-195146-640x406.png word_count: 890 --- # OTUS receives a Bambu Lab grant through the Let’s Make It Fund OTUS Project, the American research initiative focused on flying drones through the interiors of tornadoes, announced that it has officially received sponsorship from [Bambu Lab](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/bambu-lab/) under the Let's Make It Fund program. The team, which until now had financed itself almost entirely out of pocket, has thus gained its first major partner from the 3D printing industry, along with access to the manufacturer's engineering and promotional resources. The company did not disclose the amount of the grant, but the fund's involvement represents the largest external support the project has received since its founding in 2024. ### 3D printed drones sent into tornadoes ![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-07-03-200211-340x173.png) OTUS, or Observations of Tornadoes by UAV Systems, was founded in February 2024 by three friends from the worlds of meteorology and drone racing. Less than three months later, Louis Tucker, the 2023 national collegiate FPV (first person view) racing champion, became the first person in history to fly a drone through a multivortex tornado under full pilot control. The American FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) granted the team authorization to operate in and around tornadoes, which in itself is a regulatory rarity. During the 2025 season, OTUS intercepted eight tornadoes across eleven penetrations, ranging from EF1 to EF3, on several occasions sending two drones into the same funnel and recording thermodynamic data and flight telemetry that had never before been collected by any ground based instrument. The method begins with circles. The team flies around the tornado in orbits at several altitudes, sampling the environment surrounding the funnel, and as the circles tighten, the drone enters the vortex itself. ![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-07-03-195209-640x339.png) ### Applications of the measurements The measurements are used to improve forecast accuracy and issue warnings. Pressure and humidity data from inside the storm feed computer models that meteorologists use to predict when and where a tornado will form. The better the input data, the longer the potential warning time, and when it comes to tornadoes, every minute matters because many of them touch down with only a few minutes of advance notice. The second equally important beneficiary is the construction industry. The focus is on measuring the vertical wind component, the upward force that lifts cars, trailers, and poorly anchored buildings. Current building codes account for it only to a very limited extent because until now there has been no source capable of providing reliable data on how strong it is near the ground. With real measurements of three dimensional wind loads, engineers will be able to design houses with better anchoring, which is far less expensive than rebuilding an entire neighborhood after a natural disaster. Basic scientific knowledge of the phenomenon itself is equally important. Comparing what happens inside the funnel with what happens around it at the exact same moment provides a picture that no one has ever had before, and that is precisely what reveals how a tornado works from the inside. ### A sensor that does not exist on the market ### Tanner Beard, the aerospace engineer responsible for the design, 3D prints OTUS drones, and his workshop houses a milling machine, a lathe, and a welder alongside the printers. The aircraft are lightweight, inexpensive to reproduce, and designed for a single task that the market simply does not serve. In cooperation with NIST, the American standards institute, the team is developing its own multidirectional wind sensor capable of measuring the vertical component of wind gusts, because there is simply no commercially available sensor that is light enough for such conditions. The government shutdown delayed calibration work carried out with the institute, and despite interest from the academic community, public funding remained out of reach. ### Why Bambu Lab Bambu Lab is a Chinese manufacturer of FFF printers that has come to dominate the consumer and prosumer 3D printing market within just a few years. Let's Make It Fund, launched at the end of 2025, offers creators grants of up to 300 thousand dollars, selects between two and five projects each quarter, and complements financial support with engineering assistance and marketing reach. Participants do not even need to own a printer from the brand, although OTUS has used them since the very beginning. The manufacturer states that the fund is not a public relations exercise, but an effort to build goodwill and trust among companies and consumers. ### What radar cannot see near the ground The United States records approximately one thousand to one thousand two hundred tornadoes each year, more than Canada, Australia, and all of Europe combined. In 2025, tornadoes killed more than sixty people and caused 1.9 billion dollars in damage, with Missouri alone accounting for 1.7 billion. EF4 and EF5 tornadoes make up around two percent of all cases, but account for nearly seventy percent of fatalities, while the so called Tornado Alley has for years been shifting eastward into more densely populated and poorer regions of the South, where tornadoes more often strike at night and hit areas dominated by mobile homes, where the largest share of victims lose their lives. The problem is that wind speeds close to the ground, where people are killed, are the most difficult to measure because radar primarily detects the higher parts of the funnel. This is precisely the gap that OTUS aims to fill. For the 2026 season, the team has fifteen drones and plans to intercept more than twenty tornadoes during eight weeks of field operations.