Design and order your own quadcopter

M

Matt Aitken

New Member
Hi, I’m Matt and I’d like to tell you about a product I’m building that will allow you to easily design and order your own quadcopter.

Form is an app you use to invent amazing things and order them to your door. Using a combination of simple parts (beams, axles, joints, gears) and intelligent parts (processors, batteries, motors, sensors) you can create sophisticated toys, robots or machines. In fact, you can design almost anything you can think of. Or you can browse what other people have made and build their creations instead.

First, design your invention and then hit order. Once your creation arrives, follow the step-by-step instructions to put it together. Whatever you’ve designed – whether it's the ultimate quadcopter, remote control car or robot – you can control it and view all the live sensor data using our app. Your inventions will be programmable too, using the same programming language as Arduino.

If you love your invention you can share it with the community. All shared designs are free to build, you just need the required parts. If another builder doesn’t have all the parts to build your invention, then they can order any extras they need. Each time someone orders parts to build your invention, you are rewarded with money, or credits for more parts.

We’re building a user base of those who are interested in the product and are keen to help us develop it further. We’re making steps everyday and will be sharing our progress with those who join our newsletter – including early previews of all the parts. I’d love to get your input and for you to be amongst the first to find out more.

Sign up here http://www.buildwithform.com

Thanks,
Matt
matt@buildwithform.com
 
Wow, this seems to be a great idea. When do you guys expect to be up and running? What all do you guys do. 3D printing, CNC, general manufacturing?
 
Engraving machine, it is used for cutting, etching, and general manufacturing parts. You can usually put in a design off from a CAD and it will cut it, kinda like a 3D printer. It uses subtractive printing rather than additive like 3D printers.


cnc_machine3_large.jpg
 
Thanks! We're going to launch a Kickstarter campaign later this year – hopefully before the end of the summer. We're currently refining our core electronics and working hard on the virtual builder element of the app. The final product will manufactured in China using predominantly Injection Moulding for the plastic parts, with custom electronics that we're developing.

We have a MakerBot Fifth Generation which we've been using to prototype all the mechanical and structural parts. Then Shapeways to get some more higher quality parts to test out when we feel like the rough prototypes are working well. Honestly the MakerBot Fifth Generation was a complete nightmare until recently when we got a new Smart Extruder – it was plagued with problems but it seems they have finally sorted it out.

We're going to be sharing a lot more details, including designs of parts for feedback on our mailing list. It's also the place where we'll be giving people early access to help us test and refine the final product. Please do sign up and tell anyone else you think would be interested – we'd love to hear from you.

Matt
http://www.buildwithform.com
 
GJH105775 said:
Engraving machine, it is used for cutting, etching, and general manufacturing parts. You can usually put in a design off from a CAD and it will cut it, kinda like a 3D printer. It uses subtractive printing rather than additive like 3D printers.
Click to expand...
Thanks, mate)
 
I have already sent a few friends the link. If you guys get this up and running you will probably have me ordering some prints. What type of time frame do you guys have?
 
Sorry for the slow reply – for some reason I didn't get an email notification. Thanks for forwarding the link on!

Our target is to be beta testing the product by the end of the year and have the full public release around this time next year.
 
Matt I am from South Africa and really keen to start building my own copter and many more – can you please advise me where to start –
kindest regards Derek
 
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