Discussions

Morning,

I thought I would share my quadcopter build experience with you.

I started with the idea of using Trex 600 tail booms for the arms.  Concept pic below.

I thought alot about the body assembly and did some enquires about the cost for various materials, CF, PCB, Fibreglass, lexan etc and decided to go with PCB.  It is an extremly strong rigid material that is not too heavy and not too brittle. Concept pic below

I am very pleased with my contruction.  In the next image the quadcopter weighs in at 467g.  Well within my weight tolerance calculations.

I decided to use the horizontal stabilizer mounts with a PCB discs bolted on it for my Motor mounts.  If I decide a single clamp is insufficient, it will be really easy to add a second.  See pic below.

The skids were a challenging exercise.  Make something that is strong and durable, with easy replacement, long enough so that I can mount my custom camera jig underneath, light and of course it must look pretty good too.

At this point, I thought it would be a good time to build my electronics cage.  It is strong and durable and should if I am lucky, help protect the electronics in case of a prang.  First eyelevel.

From the top

Temporarily mounted on quad

The quad is 1m from motor to motor.  With Electronics, batteries, motors and escs it will weigh in at 1.2kg, have 4.5KG of thrust and a calculated runtime of 22 minutes with the two 11.1v 3000mah 35C batteries.  The receiver and ardupilot-Mega will be run off a 3rd two cell 1200 mah battery connected to a 5V BEC.  The electronics draw is currently on average 0.3A/h so I dont believe that runtime here will be an issue.  Even with the additional servo to angle the camera, the onboard battery will far outlast the flight battery. 

I would appriciate any comments or advice as this is the first quad I have ever built.

Regards,

Solo