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A rainy weekend in Switzerland

Posted by Christof Schmid on September 26, 2010 at 2:30pm

After reading the "unboxing ArduCopter" the rainy weekend came just right. I already made some drawings in the mornings when waiting to wakeup the kids at 7.

Some drawings, parts, testcuts


The machine

Some parts

Some more parts

The result

Details

More details

This is it. I hope to have the maidenflight soon.

Thanks to all ArduCopter people for the inspiration and the code.

Cheers Christof

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Comments

  • Christof Schmid November 17, 2010 at 9:46pm
    I made the parts with a very tight fit. Then assabled them with a little hammer and put a drop of thin CA at the joints. I was sanding the ciontact area a litte bit. thats all and the frame is extremly rigid.
  • madhuran wilson November 17, 2010 at 4:27pm
    any suggestions on the glue to make the parts?
  • Christof Schmid November 16, 2010 at 7:55am
    The lower body and the motormounts are 2mm carbon, The upper construction 1.5mm carbon. The parts are made on a CNC milling machine. You need hard metal bits with a diamond cut. 1.5mm - 2mm. tey are cheap (2-3USD) and work quite well.
  • madhuran wilson November 16, 2010 at 7:11am
    oh yea i had that problem too, my speed controllers were working, then the alpha code which runs at 200hz, made it incompatible.. so im looking for compatible speed controllers.

    those are carbon fiber plates right? how are you cutting them with a mill, i thought the drill bits cant handle carbon fiber...
  • Christof Schmid November 16, 2010 at 6:05am
    That is a lokal brand called ePower. Its very Important to setup the controllers amnually to your Radio. At first, not all motors where starting correct so I had to change the startup mode to "very soft". Now it works awsome. I had to adjust the PIDS quite a bit. The first flight was shaky and unstable.
  • madhuran wilson November 16, 2010 at 5:32am
    amazing, how did the pid tuning go? i saw the video looks very stable. Im having problems with an incompatible speed controller, what is the speed controller you are using?

    definitely an inspirational build for me,
  • Admin
    Morli October 8, 2010 at 9:26am
    Looks even better in these photos. pls, Keep us posted with video too when you have them.
  • Christof Schmid October 3, 2010 at 2:35pm
    The Quad is finished so far, PID's adjusted and its waiting for the video payload.
    Total weight 1610Gr with 4400mAh 3s
    Hovering current is 19A
    @ 75% batterie usage the flying time is +- 10min.

    Thanks again to the AC team. The code is very stable. I am looking foreward to test the GPS features.

    Best

    Christof



  • Christof Schmid September 30, 2010 at 1:20pm
    Thanks for the good wishes.

    Morli, its just a "design shape". I thought it would look nicer than straight. And whats a CNC machine for? Cuting nice curves...

    I had my maidenflight today and it worked out quite well. I had the copter in stabilize but it was oscilating in pitch and roll at maybe 3-4 Hz to an angle of 10° per side. I was using standard PID's.

    Does anyone have some suggestions where I should start tuning?

    Thanks

    Christof
  • Admin
    Morli September 27, 2010 at 8:14am
    Good work , pls keep us posted with maiden flight details and videos . The legs instead of pointing inwards if points outwards may be better IMHO or is there any specific reason for this arrangement. Thanks for sharing the experience.
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