The sUAS market for surveying applications are dominated by fixed-wing aircraft instead of multicopters. The reason is obvious, the multicopters have very short flight time and can not run long flight plans.
I'm not sure that this will go on for long. There are already many multicopters exceeding the hour and half flight time(only experimental flights without payload). Right now there is technology to stay one hour with a reasonable payload. Part of the "secret" is that the payload represents a small portion of the vehicle weight, which in practice is equivalent to using a larger multicopter.
The advantages of multicopters with respect to planes to do this kind of work where you have to move to an area where, almost certainly, you will not find a meadow of green grass is obviously the launch and recovery. Multirotors no need catapults, nor any parachute and not need landing strip, the roof of a vehicle can serve.
We are working on a very special model, it is a quadrotor with 1280mm diagonal for 27-29 inch propeller and a takeoff weight of about 12Kg. Though not proven, estimate flight time will be about 1 hour with 2 kg of payload.
Printing huge multicopters. All parts of this multicopter but arms and frame plates has been printed in PLA. it have about 112 hours of printing:
Pixhawk. Watch this! Pixhawk size compared to the frame:
(ADDED PICTURES 2-SEP-2014)
Best regards,
Jose Luis Cortes
Quaternium.es
Comments
@Simon,
What kind of 28" props are you running at 50V? I have been warned against running carbon fiber at high voltage because of the high RPMs involved. For example: the U8 suggests CF props at 6S and wood props at 12S.
Depends on what type of printer you have of course. Personally I'd rather have a laser cutter first.
Interesting: shapeways.com has a special section for drone parts:
http://www.shapeways.com/gadgets/drones?li=nav
Are you meaning this Hobbywing 70A HV ESC rebranded by t-motor? It is too big for this application, I probably did not exceed 20A full throttle. but it is an option.
there are very few ESCs for 12S and low current, i am considering your suggestion about Afro HV, it's great this works to 12S, anyway it have a problem. it is marked as 8S and i believe you but i can not sell this ESCs to customers. Anyway i will order some of them.
More options:
http://www.yge.de/artikel.php?search=yge60hv
http://www.nem.gr/nem-35a-esc-opto-400hz-lipo-5~12s-lipo-best-for-m...
suggestions are welcome!
Which ESC's are you using Jose?
I tried the Tiger ESC's with the old firmware and they were terrible.
I think they have this sorted now.
Pretty sure Steadidrone use them and so do Kopterworx....
Simon
Quadrocopter,
I probably test this battery, it is 17000mAh/13S of Li-ion 3.6V cells 46.8V
it weight 3.8kg.
Ted Van Slyck,
For this model we probably use 10S with Tmotor U10 and 2885 carbon propeller form Foxtech. There are another interesting motors for example from Hengli.
I am thinking to build custom propellers for bigger project. Above 29" there is almost nothing. I designed and build a propeller for PPG in a 5 axis wood router.
Quadrocopter,
Thanks for advice about AfroESC, That's interesting, in fact I am calculating about 7A@10S each motor for 12kg. i will test it.
Andrew Rabbitt,
for me there are a big difference from machining to printing. machined parts requires much of your time, 3d printers work alone!
Armstrong units I think Bill, sustainable energy absorbing material if what I read is true.
2 x 10,000mah 6 cells in series.
X 2
So a total of 4 X 10,000mah 6 cells. Approx weight is 1.2kg each X 4
= Almost 5KG.
Simon
@Jack: what kind of power source do these tools use? :-p
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