3D Robotics

One-hour scratch Arducopter build

From Hackaday:

[marhar] was pretty confident in his quadcopter building skills when he made a bet to build and fly a quadcopter in just one hour! This is a big task but he saved valuable time by using some unlikely parts that were hanging around his parts bin. And to make the task a little more difficult, this build wasn’t done in a nice shop, either. It was built outside on a patio floor with the only power tools available being a hand drill, miter saw and small drill press!

The frame is made from cheap, sturdy and available scrap wood. The center plates are 1/4″ plywood and the arms are 3/4″ square fir strips. Notice the landing gear, yes, those are mini wiffle balls zip-tied to the wooden arms. Although an unlikely candidate for landing gear, they are surprisingly effective.

The flight controller board is an Ardupilot. [marhar] did use a flight controller that he previously had in another quadcopter. He used it as-is, and it worked, but no programming or configuration time is included in the 1-hour limit. Even so, it doesn’t take away from the impressiveness of the build time.  The motors, ESC’s and battery are just standard types used for most multirotors.

[marhar] doesn’t say what he won for completing the ‘copter but we hope it was something good, he deserves it. If you’d like to make something similar, [marhar] gives very detailed instructions and provides templates for the wood parts on his Instructables page. Check out the time-lapse build video after the break…

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Comments

  • Moderator

    I always thought these were pretty wooden frames

    mwc quad // ecks frame from warthox on Vimeo.

  • Moderator

    That just shows that reading the manual works! I bet he coul d have made that even quicker if he made it messy. My first hex was a wooden frame that I made on an afternoon because I had the bits lying around. Great vibration damping material.

  • you could get a four-way power loom from HK which would save all the soldering, and even more time.

    How long for a COTS frame, like a f450? He could do it in 30 minutes I reckon. With premade loom and already running apm.
  • NAAA!!! I take an hour only to solder one wire I need that guy to help me, IMPRESSIVE!!!!

     

  • Moderator

    One clarification:

    • The genius behind the build is actually long-time diydrones member Andreas Oesterer.  Trappy sent Andreas a TBS Discovery frame as payment for winning the bet.
    • I'm also denying that the original post identified the quadcopter as "Andreas' Big Woody".
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