A team of aerospace engineering students and I at Iowa State University are developing CyDrone, a multi-role, semi-autonomous sUAV at a price point within the budget of individuals and localized public entities (~$3k).
We want the system to use primarily COTS components. Yet our research of available airframes has not shown any that can meet our requirements. Hence we have begun the design of a custom airframe. We plan to use EPP which has performed admirably for our current prototype, CyDrone X-2.
So far we have failed to find information on how to procure a custom EPP airframe. While manufacturing the airframe within our team would be a challenging yet rewarding project, that project does not fit within our goals. Ideally, we wish to provide a supplier with a 3D Model Based Definition (most likely modeled in SolidWorks). We want the supplier to design and manufacture the molds, and then to mold the airframe components from EPP.
Has anyone gone down this road? I have seen some discussion regarding "DIY EPP Molding", but I must stress that our team does not want to spend the resources on manufacturing the airframe.
For more information on CyDrone, please see our team's Wiki:
https://sites.google.com/site/cydroneuav/
Note that this Wiki acts primarily as a collaborative workspace for our team and is not designed to function as a marketing tool. Still, our team has consented to share the Wiki publicly.
Any information or links would be helpful. Thanks for your time and attention!
Best regards,
Alex Zimmerman
CyDrone | Airframe and Flight Systems
Iowa State University | Student in Aerospace Engineering
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Replies