My own quad design

[Timotheus88]

I thought I would upload some photos of my first own built quad.

This first iteration is a basic strong cheap airframe using a combination of lasercut MDF chassis, carbon fibre tubes and home printed plastic components (love the 3d printer). Most of the printed components are 70% hollow.











The Specs,

Crius v2 board with GPS and external LED';s loaded with MegaPirateNG 2.8
IPower 2217Q 880kv
1247 props
BLheli 30A ESC
8400 3s lipo
3DR Telemetry

The current total weight minus the battery is 930g.

Its flys really well, I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of sorting the PID tuning. Stable and controllable with wind and lots of power too.

The next updated airframe design including carbon fibre chassis is around 100g lighter.

Then to add GoPro and FY G3 Brushless gimbal ::)

Any thoughts?

[teslahed]

That looks very nice - good design.

If you';ve really used MDF i would suggest you try plywood. 3mm thick plywood will be stronger and lighter than what you';ve used and laser cuts very nicely.

If you did a straight swap - MDF for plywood - you';d get longer flight times and a better power to weight ratio.

[Timotheus88]

Thanks,

Currently the MDF is 6mm, The main reason I used it is because I already some in stock.

I';m planning to use a carbon fibre sandwich panel that I have laid up to replace the MDF plates. That will save some weight, and increase flight times 

I';ll get some plywood to make some plates and have a look into weight and stiffness comparisons between the solutions

[Ground Engineer]

Does the sonar work ok outside over the grass?

[teslahed]

I';m planning to use a carbon fibre sandwich panel that I have laid up to replace the MDF plates. That will save some weight, and increase flight times 

I';ll get some plywood to make some plates and have a look into weight and stiffness comparisons between the solutions

Plywood wont be as good as carbon fibre but it should be much better than MDF and much cheaper than carbon fibre (and good enough on a quadcopter that size).

If you have the resources to go straight to carbon don';t bother with plywood but if you can';t afford to do that right now try plywood instead. It';s about £1 per A4 sheet if you buy it from a good source. Try to find ';laserply'; that';s designed to work well with laser cutters if possible.

[Timotheus88]

I haven';t really tried reading the sonar on the grass, so I couldn';t say.

I have the carbon fibre plate already made, I didn';t want to cut it yet as I wanted to test with the MDF plates to see how everything fitted and fly for a while to get used to crashing without destroying the carbon fibre.   

The chassis can be made a bit more compact so I will cut the carbon fibre to the new smaller design.

In the future when I make the next one (definitely will be making another) I';ll look into "laserply" as a starting airframe material cheers