UAV Class Drone

[Garrett Bragg]

Good morning all! This is my first post here so if I break any protocols I apologize in advance.

My team and I are building a very basic drone (x-frame style quadcopter) for our UAV class (no camera or FPV) and need some guidance into selecting the electrical equipment (motors, esc's, flight controllers, batteries, etc.) and were hoping for some recommendations and guidance. We are looking to keep this project relatively cheap and basic, as we are just showing that we can build a function quadcopter.

Our frame must be custom built and not purchased, so we are machining ours out of aluminum using a CNC. I have attached the frame diagram below. The frame weight is roughly 1.3kg with the size being 24" from motor mount to motor mount.

The transmitter assigned to us is a Flysky FS-16.

Thank you in advance!

 

[holtneil]

Hi what is the distance between say the 2 front motors , this will tell you how big a prop you can use
You need to be careful of over all weight the battery will add the most weight 1.3 kg for the frame is heavy , shame you can't use carbon fibre or plastic to make the frame , you can play with set ups on ecalc.com
If the over all quad is heavy you may have to use a heavy lift motor with big props
Also you need to know how big of a motor you can mount so you may have to make motor mount plates to fit on to the arms

 

[wafflejock]

Think @hotneil meant ecalc.ch but yah definitely worth throwing them the cash for the full version to check out all your specs before buying/building when you're working on something custom or with a lot of unknowns. Also agree that sounds like a pretty heavy quad to me but I'm used to working with 250mm size or 5" props so if it's much bigger then perhaps the weight isn't as big a concern as I'm thinking (for reference a 250mm or 5" prop setup will typically be in the 500-800g range total)

 

[Garrett Bragg]

Hi what is the distance between say the 2 front motors , this will tell you how big a prop you can use
You need to be careful of over all weight the battery will add the most weight 1.3 kg for the frame is heavy , shame you can't use carbon fibre or plastic to make the frame , you can play with set ups on
If the over all quad is heavy you may have to use a heavy lift motor with big props
Also you need to know how big of a motor you can mount so you may have to make motor mount plates to fit on to the arms

I just spoke with our mechanicals (who are in charge of the frame) and we're looking at cutting the dimensions in almost half. Would 3D printing this be a durable option, or should we stick with aluminum?

 

[Garrett Bragg]

Think @hotneil meant ecalc.ch but yah definitely worth throwing them the cash for the full version to check out all your specs before buying/building when you're working on something custom or with a lot of unknowns. Also agree that sounds like a pretty heavy quad to me but I'm used to working with 250mm size or 5" props so if it's much bigger then perhaps the weight isn't as big a concern as I'm thinking (for reference a 250mm or 5" prop setup will typically be in the 500-800g range total)

Thank you for your response! I think we're going to scale down our size (by roughly half) and are currently looking at 3D printing as an option. There are no requirements for this drone size wise, or any other aspect besides the frame needing to be custom built. What are your thoughts on 3D printing?

 

[wafflejock]

I just spoke with our mechanicals (who are in charge of the frame) and we're looking at cutting the dimensions in almost half. Would 3D printing this be a durable option, or should we stick with aluminum?

Aluminum will be better with regard to rigidity and durability 3d printing would only win in weight but generally can't find materials that are stiff enough to avoid flexing while flying. My first quadcopter was a 3d printed frame but was the Peon230 so only 230mm motor to motor distance. I printed a lot of arms out of PLA because I kept breaking them learning to fly so it was good with regard to that but not nearly as rigid as the carbon fibre frames and not nearly as durable. I also printed one of the last arms before switching to CF out of Nylon the nlyon arms would be a ton harder to break but are more flexible in general than PLA or PETG (perhaps a CF infused filament could help but would look into Tom S on youtube he has a lot of filament stress test videos, but lots of others too https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=filament+strength+test).