Making A Drone Frame

[JustMatt]

I've been working on a drone frame in my spare time. The first part of it is done and assembled:

0612171301_HDR.jpg

It's about 15 inches between motors, and 20 inches across the diagonal. All of the individual pieces were designed so that they would assembly by dovetailing together. It seems like there's a little too much flex across the diagonal as it stands, but I still need to decide how I'm going to fit the batteries, flight controller, and other electronics. Hopefully by the time I've got all of that built in, it should be more rigid. The four motors that my friend is loaning me for the project should be around the area of a 50cc internal combustion engine, so strength will be a factor.

I'm impatient and don't trust my cheap-o printer for super long print times, so I ran everything at low quality settings in Cura. The inner pieces were about 7 hours each, and the outer arms were around 10 hours each.

I'll update with more pictures and information as the project progresses.

[number40Fan]

Looking good. What plans are you going off of or are you making your own design?

[JustMatt]

Just going by the seat of my pants. No idea if it will even work to be completely honest. I may end up augmenting the design with some carbon fiber parts as well if I need to.

I'm using Fusion 360 for the design.
frame.jpg

If it fails spectacularly, I will be sure to post a video of it.

[number40Fan]

Unless you are getting enough flex for the blades to touch whatever you have mounted in the middle of the frame, I doubt you'll have any issues. 4 motors and a battery and they can almost fly themselves.

Want a little more rigidity, think about printing parts upside down. As the print cools while printing, it will shrink inwards. When flipped right side up, that bit of shrinkage will help with up and in strength.

[curious aardvark]

wow that's some heavy duty frame !

[Emma]

awesome work, nice drone frame. @JustMatt

[iggut]

Nice work! I am planning to do and RC Plane and then a Drone.
Just trying to dial in the print settings before I do since my TEVO Black Widow is my first printer.