Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on March 8, 2012 at 4:20am

Now that is a clever idea, that is flipping obvious. Well done HK.

Comment by Thomas Saunders on March 8, 2012 at 5:44am

very nice. And the hole in the middle looks just perfect for poking a camera through and performing some optical flow. Thanks for making me spend my money!

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on March 8, 2012 at 7:47am

That's pretty neat.  Sure is small.  I added up the price for the frame, the V3 board, 4 of the Turnigy ESC's, 4 motors, and 48 propellers, came to $125 or something.  Not bad.

How well do those HK boards fly?  I wonder if it's possible to reflash them with some kind of stripped down version of Arducopter?

Comment by John Moore on March 8, 2012 at 9:07am

Looking forward to reading about this once someone builds one.

Comment by Steve on March 8, 2012 at 11:27am

Cool but this has been available for months: http://flyduino.net/Flydumini-Frame

Comment by Veikko Vierola on March 8, 2012 at 12:49pm

I wonder why these laser cut frames are usually designed so that the engine strut is very wide. Wide engine strut blocks the downwash of the rotor and reduces efficient lift. Why not increase the strut height dimension and reduce the width as thin as possible so that the air flow wouldn't be interrupted by the struts so much?

Developer Comment by John Arne Birkeland on March 8, 2012 at 2:05pm

Veikko: Mostly price related. Thicker plates cost more and take longer to cut. But I would not worry. Propeller blades has close to no lift at the base. Most of the lift comes from the outer 2/3's of the blade.

Comment by Cliff-E on March 9, 2012 at 10:00am

Appears the PCB microquad is the hot item (from researchers to consumers) currently...

Not bad at all: HK comes through again with a reasonable design and hobby price. Sure it likely could fall apart after 2 crashes, but still.

I'm wondering what phenolic grade they are using, cause you [really] can't laser cut nor waterjet cut G9->11 and G3-8 burns or melts easily on the laser. 3-axis CNC could be what's happening here and it's just easier to cut bigger shapes. 

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