Blogs

3d Printed Mini HexaCopter

Posted by Todd Urban on November 18, 2014 at 2:00pm

3689626280?profile=original

I Have been working on this 3d printed hexacopter for some time now let me know what you think of the design ive been entertaining selling them and or the STL's so you can print them yourself here are some pics and some gimbal video feedback good or bad is much appreciated also if you would buy it what would you pay for it3689626459?profile=original3689626295?profile=original3689626349?profile=originalhttp://youtu.be/bDSipO_EQhE

 

E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

  • Todd Urban November 21, 2014 at 11:51am

    total print time is 20 hrs no you can print just the part you need its a replicator clone as far as material its not very much don't know exactly 1 spool is 26 bucks and I have  printed like 10 of them and have half a spool left had a pretty major crash yesterday had one esc overheat  and it FOD on me fell from like 100 feet only broke the bottom plate and 3 props  printed a new bottom plate and was up and flying in 2 hrs oh and as far as arms breaking you wont break an arm they are way stronger than the center plate so the center plate will snap the center plate take way less time to print and if it breaks away you wont damage as much

  • Michael Ciurescu November 21, 2014 at 11:41am

    Todd,

    What 3D printer did you use?

    How much time does it take to print that frame using a 3D printer?

    How much material did you have to use? (and how much does that material cost?)

    If you crash the drone, and one arm breaks, do you have to re-print the entire frame?

  • Todd Urban November 20, 2014 at 7:51am
    Yea its in follow mode now the legs are just too close im going to try and adjust placement to get them out of the shot I am going to do some sustained flight this weekend after witch I will post up the logs I reworked a couple of pices and now with the 3 axis gimbal and the battery its under 2 lb the gimbal is still heavy Going to remake some of the heavy pices today and cut more weight
  • Glenn M November 20, 2014 at 1:04am

    Nice frame, I like the sound of how long it's flying for. For a 3 axis gimbal you don't need full rotation, If you can get it a bit in front of the legs you could just just run it in follow yaw mode and keep the legs out.

    If you could find some smaller gimbal motors, you'd be able to save a bunch of weight. Also maybe print a 3 axis gimbal instead of using that aluminium one?

  • Exmaps November 19, 2014 at 10:45pm

    Todd Urban  you mention that this thing can fly for 15/30 minutes. Was wondering if you want to give www.exmaps.com a try and share the log? Curious to see your battery consumption. 

  • Todd Urban November 19, 2014 at 9:03pm
    So I threw a 3rd axis on my cheap china gimbal works pretty good legs are a problem but im working on that http://youtu.be/5iTyL0iW2BA
  • Moderator
    Gary Mortimer November 18, 2014 at 10:19pm

    Excellent well done

  • Marc Dornan November 18, 2014 at 8:51pm

    That seems a reasonable price as is now. If you get a workable solution for a 3 axis gimbal, I am not so sure there are many other things like it out there in your size class. Do you think a simple CNCed aluminum bracket is the way to go. Bolt one end of the yaw motor to your base plate and the other to said bracket. It would have wings at 70 degrees to attach 4 CF legs with clamps. I know someone that cuts aluminum for me........

  • Todd Urban November 18, 2014 at 8:24pm
    Yea I was talking about the yaw plate and legs at this point I was estimating around 44$ for a frame kit with the hardware yea I have the log files to prove the 15 min flight time of course thats not very aggressive flying if I can cut that gimbal weight down I can hopefully get more without the legs and gimbal in a loiter I got 27.5 min of time in loiter I will shoot some video of a full flight time and speed it up so I can post it on the tube ill try and make time this weekend
  • Marc Dornan November 18, 2014 at 7:34pm

    You really would not even have to design a gimbal - there are plenty of light tarot-like 2 axis gimbals that can be attached to a yaw axis plate with legs attached. 3 axis AM boards are affordable now. Might need to be a slightly bigger yaw axis motor than pitch or roll axis. If this is all less that 2.2 lbs it would be very interesting. I would put a VR uBrain in this although an APM mini obviously works too. If you got this to do 15 minutes it would be impressive. Even 12 minutes would be good. Keep me posted. Any idea what your current frame kit would cost?

This reply was deleted.