Developer

Cheap Quad Frame with Wood running MegaPiratesNG - BUILD LOG

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Hi Guys,

A small project I have been working on. Its a cheap quad-copter frame made out of 6mm plywood and fiberglass. I was thinking of how to make a quad for as cheap as possible, when I thought of wood. I already had a 3mm fiberglass sheet, so I drew out the center plate and sent it to get machined.

Next I drew out some arms on some scrap plywood and sent that to get machined. All in all, machining cost was $0.06. Collected the machined parts the next day and assembled within an hour. Added a landing skid from a helicopter and mounted a Freeduino Mega ADK. 

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I'll use the Mega as a Flight Controller. A new FreeIMU 0.4.3 board form Fabio should be on its way soon. Planning on running ArduPiratesNG on the Mega - this is gonna be the cheapest platform capable of running Arducopter probably!

If you notice, my Mega is an ADK, which has a USB host capable of communication with Android devices. Thus I have the choice to add looooooots of features later.

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Motor/Props/ESCs not thought of as of yet, so need your opinions here. Battery will be a 3S 2200mAh 30C Turnigy battery unless anyone here provides me with other options*hint*

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There seems to be minor arm-flex, expected with plywood, but the wood itself is good (no filler material in between sheets). Tell me what you think about this. If you guys like it, I'll do a post on RCGroups as well.

I am a 14 year old 'kid' so any advice is welcome (stuff like "give the kid a prize!" is also welcome!)

Additional Pics:

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Kabir

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Comments

  • Moderator

    Thanks Adam. 

    Kabir, could you please upload them here? you could edit the post.. 

  • Clicking on the missing images shows what the problem is, this page is generating too much DL traffic, and so sharing of those images has been (presumably temporarily) disabled. Maybe moving the pictures to photobucket or something would keep them up more reliably?

  • Moderator

    Kabir, the photos in this post are missing.. did you remove them from dropbox?

  • Kabir, these photos are of my Quads, one is 38cm motor to motor and other one 65cm motor to motor for which I made the frames myself.  

    In 2008 and 2009, quad frames were very expensive and moreover the shipping was also high but now a days they are neither expensive nor shipping so high.

  • Developer

    Thanks Rana, what are the photos in the following post??

  • 3692507061?profile=original

  • Kabir, following is the quad frame with me, bought long back, not used, can spare for you. I made my quad in 2009, out of aluminium square hollow tubes. And It was perfect, parameters of DJI 450 Quad frame fits well. 

    http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__19595__HobbyKing_Mini_Qu...

    3692079390?profile=original

  • Developer

    Its not that bad, they flex a bit, but not too much. I'll shorten the arms if the flex is too bad, that should partially fix the problem ?

  • Hold the center in one hand , hold the motor mount in the other hand

     if you can twist the arm the motors will randomly go back and forth and it will be all over the sky

This reply was deleted.