Mini-X Quadcopter Drone

Description

All parts designed and printed in-house (minus the electronics of course). Motivated by 1806 2300kvh motors and a CC3D Atom, this lil' guy can reach speeds of 40 kph and carry a GoPro (but not at the same time). Capable of lifting 110% it's own weight, this quad is small in size only (250mm).
Designed with nooks, crannies and attachment points, this quad WANTS to carry your next robotics project.

Kit available through Tindie http://bit.ly/MinimXTindie
STLs available through Thingiverse http://bit.ly/MinimXThingi
Have fun with this one!

Details

So I was trying to build a quadcopter to sell retail. I built an awesome one that was about 330mm from motor to motor, sporting 10.5 inch props that almost touched each other. It could lift 1 kg, but when I took it to a distributor, he was unsure... He thought it was awesome, but too big, really scary and too pricey. *shrug* So I went smaller, less aggressive, less scarier, and less $$$.

This quad is the result, built with experimentation in mind. Lots of places to mount sensors, lights, etc. The dome can be customized to fit your mood, or you can stack an extra level on for GPS, a Raspberry Pi or what-have-you. I also designed a GoPro (or similar) mount to fit this frame. Flying fabricated flexible filament feet feel free... Wow... Something happened to my brain there.

Files

MinimX.zip

.stl files for the printable portion of this project, also available on thingiverse as Minim-X

x-zip-compressed - 1.30 MB - 06/14/2017 at 06:26

Download

Components

1 × 3D printed frame Printed in PLA plastic from http://bit.ly/fil-ca STLs on Thingiverse!

4 × 1806 2300kvh motors DYS brand

1 × CC3D Atom flight controller Actually a knock-off

1 × Q-Brain 20A 4-in-1 ESC Totally OP but it's what I had and could handle 3S levels of power

1 × 3S 1300mah battery I used these but tested with a 4400mah battery as well

Project Logs

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The 'finished' product
ken.do • 06/14/2017 at 06:22 • 0 comments

I use the word 'finished' liberally here. An artist never feels like his art is finished. But this is a saleable product. Highly reproduce-able and customizable. Nice features like the crash helmet and filaflex landing feet add to the sexy.
And back to the X
ken.do • 06/14/2017 at 06:18 • 0 comments

I went back to the X-style frame. The spread eagle was a little weird for me.
Redesigned to accomodate mounts for GoPros and additional sensors.
Upgrades included a GoPro mount and mount points for sensors, additional sexy, etc...
The curves are nice...
'Spread Eagle' style frame
ken.do • 06/14/2017 at 06:14 • 0 comments

An interesting idea, designed to maximize it's payload volume. With the X-Style frame, I was wondering where the heck I could put all the holy crap-ton of electronic stuff that was needed to get this project off the ground. So I came up with this... Again, having little knowledge of why quadcopters are the way they are...
Afterwards, I came across the 'Dead-Cat' style of frame. The video below makes it obvious that no further definition of 'Dead-Cat' is needed.
Basic X - style frame
ken.do • 06/14/2017 at 06:05 • 0 comments

This is the X - style frame I started with. I had little knowledge of quadcopters, 3D printing or electronics at this point. But it was a start...