Search:

Popular Science magazine released an article about this drone, The Marine Corps wants to 3D print cheaper drones.

This time giving the details of where the design originated, so that's nice.

Hey hey hey, how about an amazing update on this project?

The design won the US Marine Corps NexLog challenge!
US Marine Designs 3D Printed Surveillance Drone at Fraction of Regular CostOne...

Ooops.... The battery I'm using is a 3 cell 1500mAh LiPo. I knew I'd forget something on the list.

I compiled the list of materials for the plane, I got everything from HobbyKing.com, but the list can be used as a reference to get equivalent parts from other stores:

I just uploaded the STL files to print the plane, plus an OBJ format file with the original meshes so that anyone can play with them.

Nomad UAV Mk.I


I'm going to write a bill of materials...

I have to compile all the parts and upload them to Thingiverse to replace the ones now there, there have been many design changes. It's a large number of parts, and some are tricky to print so I will...

Today I did the maiden flight, not too shabby but I need to tweak the controls to make it less responsive to the commands.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf5Z83dHrow

I just did a quick search on HIPS and the thing that is most interesting to me is that is 20% lighter than PLA, that would be a huge advantage for a plane, in the case of the Nomad it would...

Actually PLA sands very well to a smooth finish, I know, I've done it in this plane.
I have considered using Nylon but it won't work, many parts on the plane need to be glued together (using epoxy)...

The flight was with all the R/C gear installed, servos, receiver, battery, etc... Later on I plan to add a GPS autopilot and FPV gear (live output camera) to it

First (short) flight!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-hgKfL8QRE

Based on the results I'm doing some redesigning, some structural and aerodynamic changes and also redoing the wings so that...

All parts printed and assembled, electronics installed, controls rigged and mixing programmed on the radio transmitter, so it's ready to fly... now fingers crossed for good weather next weekend for...

I don't know in other designs, but in my case it was a combination of many things, a V-tail is lighter and has less aerodynamic drag than a conventional tail, besides that by inverting the tail it...

Here's something I've been working on for a couple months, it's a one meter wingspan airplane , a prototype in fact of a bigger version I plan to use for aerial photography and to supply to a NGO to...