3D Printed FPV Quadcopter "Crossfire"
Description
Electronics List:
Motors - RCTimer 750 Kv
rctimer.com/index.php?gOo=goods_details.dwt&goodsid=573&productname=
ESCs - Turnigy Plush 30A
hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__2164__TURNIGY_Plush_30amp_Speed_Controller.html
Battery - Turnigy Nanotech 3S or 4S 4000mah
hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__11927__Turnigy_nano_tech_4000mah_3S_25_50C_Lipo_Pack.html
Flight Controller - KK 2.0
hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__24723__Hobbyking_KK2_0_Multi_rotor_LCD_Flight_Control_Board.html
Update 5/20/13: I have uploaded the .SKP files for the quad. Have fun modding and tweaking!
Update 3/18/13: Added the Bottom Plate for use with the Tube spacers. The only change was a new set of holes on the Bottom plate.
Instructions
2.) Print the Arms at 50% infill. Depending on material used you may be able to get away with less infil. Using ABS and 50% will give a good starting point for a very strong, light arm.
3.) The arm, leg and pad can just be press fit together. They should fit snugly, some sanding or shaving may be required to get desired fit. Super glue can also be used if parts do not fit snugly. I have printed mine on a replicator and tolerances work well.
4.) Assemble frame and arms using 8-32 nylon machine screws or like.
5.) The bottom plate is designed to accept a 9g servo for articulating the GoPro tilt mount. Us a push rod to connect the servo arm to the hinge arm on the GoPro case.
6.) Using ear plugs or other vibration dampening material in between the GoPro case and the hinge. This will dampen out any vibrations that get to the GoPro and reduce or eliminate the rolling shutter problems that GoPros have with multi-rotors.
7.) Add electronics.
8.) Dynamically balance props on the motors. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR A STABLE FLYING PLATFORM AND TO ELIMINATE VIBRATIONS.
9.) Fly!
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Anybody printed this copter with PLA?
Is it stiff enough? Maybe with a video?
Thanks..
Tobi
Great build. I really like your receiver slot and camera mount. very unique looking design
Hey Mike,
I have done a TON of research and I've read everything I can find on building this.. Since it's my first Quad.
I've created a post over at RCGroups. I may design my own, but I'll print yours first.. and go from there :)
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums...
It appears the best combination is a 3S (4000-6000mah). 11x4.7" APC prop and NTM 910's. Which gives hover at 53% and with a 10" prop hover at 68%. I've listed all the parts I'm going to go with...
The 3S vs 4S is where I stand right now.. I can't decide!
Ben
Did you try to put on 12" props? I thing i would go nicely with those 750kV motors. Well at least i am planing to do so if i manage to fix reprap and finish printing legs.
I'm very interested in printing this! However I've never owned a quadcopter. I have a series of eflight helis and a vintage Nexus 30 (nitro) heli. I saw your basic list of electronics. However what other parts are required?
I'm going to go with a Spectrum dx6i.. As it'll work with my blade helis.
Rotor blades? What size/pitch? I've seen a few printed blades on thingiverse, have you tried any of them?
Anything else? A charger for the battery I guess. I have a really good charger but it's only for nimh and nicad R/C packs.
Oh I have a replicator one as well :)
Hey. Go for it, you should have no trouble flying it if you can keep a nitro heli in the air :) Your dx6i will work just fine.
I would stay away from printed props. They just aren't tested. They seem ver interesting and I would love to play around with them when I have some time. I have used the apc props, the 10x4.7 work great. But I've been using graupner props now and they work even better. the 9x5 or 10x5 should do you fine depending on your weight. Just be sure to dynamically ballance the prop to the motor.
As far as chargers go there are a number that will do good. I have a Thunderpower. Just check hobbyking, anything that will charge and balance 3 or 4 cell Lipo batteries will be fine.
Hope that helps, if you have any other questions feel free to ask. And be sure to post pictures when you get it printed!
Do I have to print with supports for the arm with the leg pointing in the air up from the build-plate?
Do I have to print with supports for the arm with the leg pointing in the air up from the build-plate?
Nice work ) What is the approximate total cost of this build?
Happy Easter!
Printed your design at 65% scale as the frame for my ardupilot uav quadcopter. came out very well in pla, 3 solid layers with infill at 30% on all parts. Came out very sturdy but flexible enough I wont have to worry about the pla cracking from harsh landing.
Hi Mike, I really like your design. Could you also share the BOM of electronics that you use on your model? Thanks!
Hi MikeyB - excellent design. 1) I'm curious if you have done anything to avoid warping? I'm using a Ultimaker with PLA and on my first print the arm went banana-style. 2) Is the design viable with PLA? Alternatively maybe i'd use alu- or carbontubes like lobster.
The design works for both ABS and PLA. I have not printed with PLA but others here have had good success with it. Also I thought that PLA had less of a tendency to warp. All I can say is that bed leveling is paramount to getting a good print. If the first layer isn't bonded well to the bed it can start to warp. I will restart my print if I don't like the first layer. Better to lose a few minutes then to have the warm warp 2 hours into the print. Using something like this http://www.thingiverse.com/thi... doest wonders for leveling the bed. As far as carbon tubes go, I haven't built a quadcopter with them yet but I have used my mounts and spacers in a tricopter build and they work great. I will post it soon.
Curious on how you fed your servo through that hole? I can't, with the screw tabs on the servo!
Could you design one that use 8mm carbontubes instead of the printed arms?
I am thinking about it making some motor mounts, but i cant get it just right..
Hey lobster. I am designing motor mounts and arm attachments for both a 9/16 OD carbon tube and an 11mm OD carbon tube as we speak. Are you sure that 8mm would be strong enough? The 11mm seems kinda small to me. I should have these up and printed in the next couple days, should be pretty easy to make them fit any size arm you like.
thanks for all that info. i'm going to print it soon. what kind of remote control would you recommend?
I use a Futaba 7C. It's 2.4 ghz so if you're planning on setting it up for fpv you want to choose a different freq. for the video. 5.8/1.3/900 etc. The Spectrum radios are also very popular. A little less expensive than the Futaba and with one less channel but still very good. I would go with the DX6i. Either way you can't go wrong. One of the cool things with Spectrums is that there are a lot of bind and fly models out there that will bind to the radio right out of the box.
Thanks for the help! the frame came out really nice on my printer, I've got a uPrint that I picked up cheap on ebay. the fit of the pieces is good.
Hey have you found any other geometry problems with any of my other files? I think I found all of them and re-uplaoded good files. Most of them didn't cause any problems printing but when I re-desiged the arm for some reason that error did. I have heard of netfab but haven't used them yet, maybe I should give it a try.
I printed my arms out at 50% with ABS and they feel very rigid but maybe a little heavy. I have slapped it into the concrete in the hangar a few times and haven't broken them, but no crashes yet... I'm going to try a few more sets at lower infils to see if I can find a happy medium between strength and weight.
I'm glad to hear that yours is flying well, so is mine. I'm back flying the scheduled flights and will be up in FAI mon/wed/fri if you want to meet up. I also have an old pair of video goggles I can sell you cheap if you're interested. We gotta get you into FPV :)
Totally! I sent you an email with my phone number and the address of my shop. Did you get it?
I've had really good luck printing the arms solid with 25% infill (see new new derivative I posted), and the added bonus is that they take less time to print due to having fewer perimeters.
Hi:
I'm printing this thing out as we speak, it's going to be my first quad, I was wondering if you can post what size motors you used and that sort of thing. thanks.
The one with the gear integrated into the arm? I had wondered about that. I've only printed in ABS, I hear PLA is a little bit brittle? Also did you have any problems printing the arm? I had a weird error printing one with some runnoff lines. I found some internal geometry and deleted it. Going to try it again tomorrow. Now that I am back in AK I can concentrate on finishing this project. Thanks as always for beta testing :)
Got around to printing V3, this time out of PLA. Works perfectly, I have to say, although the landing gears break off after the first hard crash.
Link was good for me!! Yes a bit wobbly coming back down.
The GoPro needs some sort of dampening to stop the jello effect.
I got it in the AIR today!!!!
its quite stable in hover, it wobbles alot when decending (probably due to bad tuning).
It flyes very nice.
The problems i had, i chalk down to "i want to fly NOW!!"
I redoed the tutorials calm and rested. it flyes good.
i got a clip going up to youtube unedited. its should be up in 2 hours or so. (http://youtu.be/_-ytf8BMtsk)
The Link looks good now. It does look like it is flying very well indeed. The props need to be balanced a little but otherwise it seems pretty well tuned. The wobbly descent happens when the quad gets into its own downwash. Pretty common on all rotorcraft and can result in "settling with power" as it known with helicopters. The is where no matter how much power you add the craft continues to sink through the turbulent air it is creating. Try descending with forward speed to keep the turbulent air behind you.
Hey, it seems that your link is broken. I would love to see that thing in the air :)
Hey the link looks wrong and doesn't seem to work. I'd love to see it flying :)
Hi Mike,
Got the quad wired up and am happy to report that it works perfectly with my fix. Haven't tried printing your updated parts yet though.
I did notice that the GoPro mount was a bit sloppy so I added a couple of washers to fill the gap.
Would like some small lugs for the GoPro mount to sit in as you can tighten up the bolt and it still
Seems to move, Had this problem before with tricopter when you bump the ground a little hard the
GoPro would tilt down.
Yeah, I've noticed that too. Have to get the tolerances and the shrinkage down. The first set i printed was way too tight. But I figured I'd come back to that once the rest of the quad was sorted out. Also I need to add a hole for the servo arm to attach to the gopro mount. Ultimately I would like to have the option of a roll mount, a tilt mount and a roll and tilt mount, but thats a ways off.
Just waiting for some servo leads and mine will be ready for test flight, printed in PLA and seems ok.
Joe,
Awesome! Simple and elegant fix. Have you printed and or flown with it yet? Also do mind if I run with this idea as when I do the Arms V3.0? I really appreciate all the time you have spent on this project. I'm in Colorado now but heading back to Tok in a week. Where is your shop in FAI? Hear it has been pretty damn warm up there recently :)
Just got mine printed, and the mounting for the gopro on the bottom did not print at all, its due to my printer being angry..
And i have a slight curling of the prints so the quad looks sad.
Im going to mount the electronics and test it.
Printed with 30% infill overall. Using a CC3D fc, and cheap china motors and esc.
I tryed to fly it, but i encountered either error in the FC or quite the resonance during take off.
I could not get it up at all, it wants to flip over.
So im guessing i got somthing wrong with the hw.
Im off to work tomorrow, and wont be able to test for another 2 weeks
Hey Joe, you were right. The arms are too flexible. I got everything put together on mine and when I went to fly it I just could not get it to fly right. What is happening is that as the arms flex upward they are in a sense creating dihedral. When a motor adds power to counteract a dipping arm that arms flexes up even more. As the dihedral increases that prop becomes less efficient and loses lift. This flexing, or "coning" is almost completely counteracting the thrust from a motor as it tries to stabilize the platform. Thanks for being the first to point out this problem. I will try more infill on the arms, say 25-50 percent and see how that goes. If that doesn't work I will try adding additional bracing to make them more rigid. Hope you are staying warm out in Fairbanks. This morning in Tok we were down to 47 below :(
Could you provide a seperate stl file for just the legs, and remove them from the arm.stl
I am looking for a nice fpv frame, and i think il give this a try.
Joe, just out curiosity were you testing this frame outside? I know that my tricopter is nearly un-flyable in temperatures below -10 F. I have to let the flight controller sit outside and coldsoak and then reset the throttle endpoints at temperature. I don't know if this is an issue with Wii boards but I would guess so because gyros have a monster drift when they are cooled. After I reset my flight controllers my coldest flight was 50 below zero. Also did you print at 10% infill? I would expect that printing with a higher infill, even in ABS would result in a more rigid arm? I don't have any experience printing in PLA. I also wonder how either plastic will stand up to the extreme temps that we have in our area :)
Too much flex in the arms, exactly. The airframe is plenty strong enough otherwise. I tried it with the following electronics: arduino mega + WMP/NK sensors running aeroquad firmware, then with multiwii firmware, then with baronPilot firmware. Then I tried it with a teensy++ 2.0 running multiWii, same IMU. Then tried with a KK2 LCD flight controller from hobbyking. While I did manage to get the copter in the air a few times, it proved impossible to get the PID control tuned to the point where it was able to keep it stable.
I'm pretty certain that it would have been fine if I had printed it from PLA...
Hey Joe. What was the nature of the problems? To much flex in the arms? Airframe failure? What kind of flight controller are you using?
Hey Mikey, having printed one of these and failed to get it to fly correctly, I would advise printing it out of PLA instead of ABS. I used ABS and I believe the airframe is not rigid enough with that material.
Havn't made and decisions yet on electronics. Probably KK board or APM. As for ESCs I'd like to get my hands on some Turnigy Plush's But haven't really thought about the motors yet. Any suggestions?
Awesome design, I've just printed one. Quick question, what do you use to hold it all together?
Keukpa
I went for "Turnigy 2217 20turn 860kv 22A Outrunner" because they were cheap and seriously powerful. I know I struggled with what to buy, so I just went for the same setup I saw on someone's blog.
That's really cool, I do wonder if the arms should be stronger in the vertical direction than horizontally - there's not much force sideways. I 've got a CF + reprapped quadcopter (http://www.thingiverse.com/thi... and I've crashed it a few times and snapped the CF rods where they meet the body, so if I were you I'd thicken the arms there and where they attach. Alternatively it may even be worth printing a weak coupler to join the arms to the body, that sacrificially breaks on impact, so you can have a load of spares printed without using too much plastic. As it is, i'd be a little worried about the point of failure being the top panel bending/snapping, which could break any electronics mounted to it. For my build, I used small m3 nylon bolts to secure the electronics, in the hope they'd fail before the pcb. Just some thoughts, I look forward to this progressing :)
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Hey Mikey! Any way to get the SketchUp files? I'm wanting to build this but can't find a place that carries that motor model.
Yes I can post the sketchup file. The 16x19mm are pretty much the standard motor mount configuration. The only other one I've seen is the triangle configuration. Let me clean it up a bit and I'll post it up here.