Blogs

My Failed Mini TriCopter

Posted by William Cox on September 17, 2010 at 10:58am

Here's my failed attempt at a mini tricopter design:

More details and pictures on my RobotBox project page. Any suggestions on getting it to work? I can't seem to find any mini RC helis that have props rotating in a direction opposite the ones on there.

Also, I'm looking for more flying robots to be added to RobotBox. It's a little light on aerial stuff :)

failure, msp430, rf2500, small, tricopter

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Comments

William Cox October 14, 2010 at 7:01pm

Davey,
Thanks for the input. Yeah, I think they were PicoZ's. I've been looking at all the small RC heli's I could find, but they all seem to rotate in the same direction. I'm not sure how much they twin blade heli is, but that's an option. The problem now is that I have to *buy* something, and that always complicates things - it means I actually have to do some planning :)
DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner October 7, 2010 at 7:34am

The photo looks like Silverlit Picooz units? They do a twin blade helictoper and I think the units contra rotate but not by gearbox, one of the actual units runs backwards?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNxeOa-l6k8

Regards

D
marshall scholz September 17, 2010 at 8:48pm

you could tear apart 2 mini coaxial heli's for the 2 counter rotating blades; like this one: http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=...
the counter rotating blades would cancel out almost all toruque per motor, leaving only thrust
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh September 17, 2010 at 12:35pm

Maybe because the blades are turning the same direction it might work better if the set up was in a triangle configuration instead of a T configuration. I"m not by far a tricopter guy but seems it might help with what your using. then it would seem controling the speed to each motor would make it go where you want. Just my thoughts.
Peter Seddon September 17, 2010 at 12:31pm

I think you will find that the Shrediquette uses two blades rotating one way and one the other - at least that is the only way I got mine to work. It uses one motor mounted on a pivot whose angle can be varied to give yaw control whereas with a quad you have two pairs of counter rotating blades and speed variation gives yaw control.

Peter
William Cox September 17, 2010 at 11:43am

jyro, Good idea. You might be able to notice in some of the pictures that they are slightly titled after someone suggested that to me. Unfortunately, the tilt needs to be variable with thrust, and having an articulating joint will be too complex/heavy for this small design. I also thought about adding baffles under the motors to give side-ways thrust, but you have the same problem.
jyro September 17, 2010 at 11:40am

as an alternative to a counter rotating motor you can tilt them to stop the heli from spinning. For instance, shrediquette does it on his tri-rotor copters: shrediquette.blogspot.com/p/shrediquette-dlx.html