Some of you may remember about 2 years ago when twitchity and I first started working on a power board for his 250 acro frame I found myself with all the parts for a quad but no frame...I became inspired to make them fly anyway. That inspiration led to what I still refer to as the UBMQ or Ultra Budget Mini Quad. It was an attempt to get the most bang for my buck and centered on a $3 frame made from cheap ply and 1/2" square dowels.
I ran an afromini with baseflight and when it worked it worked really well:
But it had some annoying tendencies that would come up when the frame would twist. Which would happen fairly often
I tried replacing the ply with acrylic and it only made the problem worse. Then I got a "real" frame and binned the budget frame. It had held up quite well, but did break arms fairly easy but since they were about $3 for 8 and fairly easy to drill and replace it wasn't THAT bad other than the twisting issue.
Well. Since I got it about 3 months ago (http://forum.flitetest.com/showthre...a-i3-Build-Log&p=251934&viewfull=1#post251934) I've been really obsessed with my new 3D printer. But mostly I've been printing tests and calibrations along with upgrades for the printer. I designed and printed a few things and shared those worth sharing on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/jhitesma/designs
I've been wanting to do something for my RC habit though. I printed a FT Mini firewall/pod and a module case for my TX so I can finally protect a hubsan module I whipped up and am always scared to use because it's just loose wires and boards dangling off my radio right now. I even 3D printed a new button for my accucell. Heck I went so far as to 3d print a plane:
It kind of flew...but I could never get glue to hold the V tail together on this PETG and the nose warped a little when printing. I could probably do it better now.
Still. I wanted to design something of my own and make it fly.
I'm also trying to get better at openscad.
And a couple people on the dRonin IRC channel got to talking about a new CF frame with angled arms similar to the setup Eric Monroe did for FT just about a year ago. They were curious to see how it would affect autotune and cornering. I've been curious since before the FT episode. But I've yet to actually try it.
So I put it all together and came up with the UBMQ - Angled Arms OpenSCAD edition: https://github.com/jhitesma/jth_angle_quad
This is on github instead of thingiverse right now because I haven't test flown any of it yet. I've bolted enough bits together to know it should almost certainly work - but I haven't had time to tear down an old build and move the parts onto this yet.
I did print and test assemble (but again not fly) the motor mounts, and I got them far enough I was willing to post them: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1490002
It's my first parametric design and is used by the quad so seemed like a good first step. Being parametric means I could make a "customizer" out of it on Thingiverse that lets you specify things like the bolt pattern and size of the arm.
The details of the motor mount itself are a post or two all their own that I'll try to get to in the next few days if there's interest. Here's the short version:
Upper Left and lower right - original design based on modifications to this existing design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1025343
Upper right - First "from scratch" mostly parametric design.
Lower Left - "Final" version of my mostly parametric design.
The design can still be improved. It's fairly easy to give values that make an unusable mount.
It's also a bit "heavy" for my tastes both at 11g and in looks. But 3D printed materials aren't particularly strong and I want it to hold up. I'm doing my test prints in PLA and will probably fly the PLA version. But I really want to print it in PETG I'm just low on PETG right now so I may have to make due with ABS which will be a real pain to get these parts to part well in.
The last time I built this quad up I just used 2 bolts and a bit of plywood laminated with hotel room key cards to clamp them on. It worked and was probably good for someone who crashed a lot because the motors just got pushed around on the shafts in a crash. It was however very annoying to have to constantly reposition them. These mounts are a bit heavier...but I'm also going to put 2204's instead of 1806's on here this time so I'm printing the motor mounts for strength with 4 perimeters and tops/bottom layers with 30% 3D honeycomb infill. The way this is designed most of the strength should come from the perimeters. So I'd cut back on the infill to save weight before I'd cut back on perimeters if I wanted to shave some weight.
There's also the quad itself to go with those mounts:
The idea is the brown bits are wood. The red bits are polycarbonate sheet or kydex or ply or CF. And the blue is 3D printed. So basically I'm adding a wedge between the plates which will hold the arms in the correct position and angle. Even without the angle this would solve most of the issues I had with the design originally. Eventually I'd like to machine the plates with my MPCNC when I finish it. But for now I'll hand cut them and may simplify them a bit.
It kind of works out like this:
You can see in the sideview that the arms are at 10 degrees.
I'm short some hardware to do final assembly but will pick it up in the morning. I was originally going to build this with 1806 motors again but mine are getting pretty beat up so putting this new set of YKS 2204 motors on seems like more fun. Plus those are setup with a Sparky2 which means it has a built in openLRS radio...if I can figure out a decent way to mount the antenna and keep it out of the props. But they're also setup with old slow emax "simon series" ESC's
I do have 3 spare KISS 18a esc's on hand - since I've yet to burn one up I have all my spares. But using them seems like a surefire way to start having fires...so maybe I'll live with the slow ESC's on there for now. The original UBMQ had BS12's which weren't much better. Meh..we'll see what I feel like when I get time for it tomorrow.
Once I fly it I'll probably put it up on thingiverse...but the github repo will always be the latest (just not necessarily in the master branch)
I'm super open to ideas and suggestions. Better yet - I put it on github for a reason, anyone can fork it and make their own version then share back any changes.
I'm still working on making the main body more parametric and figuring out the best way to get it on Thingiverse as a customizer. I may do a full thing for the entire quad - but then upload the code for the angle block separately by itslef so it can be customized since the customizer won't work with included files.
Anyway I'm having a blast learning what OpenSCAD can do and would love to have some of you guys join in with experimenting. I started to figure out animations but didn't quite get it where I wanted yet:
I ran an afromini with baseflight and when it worked it worked really well:
But it had some annoying tendencies that would come up when the frame would twist. Which would happen fairly often
Well. Since I got it about 3 months ago (http://forum.flitetest.com/showthre...a-i3-Build-Log&p=251934&viewfull=1#post251934) I've been really obsessed with my new 3D printer. But mostly I've been printing tests and calibrations along with upgrades for the printer. I designed and printed a few things and shared those worth sharing on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/jhitesma/designs
I've been wanting to do something for my RC habit though. I printed a FT Mini firewall/pod and a module case for my TX so I can finally protect a hubsan module I whipped up and am always scared to use because it's just loose wires and boards dangling off my radio right now. I even 3D printed a new button for my accucell. Heck I went so far as to 3d print a plane:
![12509262_10153208775466805_4687343081773758997_n.jpg 12509262_10153208775466805_4687343081773758997_n.jpg](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/04/125259_9ac4d74517c1bb683b25eeb73e6eb774_thumb.jpg)
It kind of flew...but I could never get glue to hold the V tail together on this PETG and the nose warped a little when printing. I could probably do it better now.
Still. I wanted to design something of my own and make it fly.
I'm also trying to get better at openscad.
And a couple people on the dRonin IRC channel got to talking about a new CF frame with angled arms similar to the setup Eric Monroe did for FT just about a year ago. They were curious to see how it would affect autotune and cornering. I've been curious since before the FT episode. But I've yet to actually try it.
So I put it all together and came up with the UBMQ - Angled Arms OpenSCAD edition: https://github.com/jhitesma/jth_angle_quad
This is on github instead of thingiverse right now because I haven't test flown any of it yet. I've bolted enough bits together to know it should almost certainly work - but I haven't had time to tear down an old build and move the parts onto this yet.
I did print and test assemble (but again not fly) the motor mounts, and I got them far enough I was willing to post them: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1490002
It's my first parametric design and is used by the quad so seemed like a good first step. Being parametric means I could make a "customizer" out of it on Thingiverse that lets you specify things like the bolt pattern and size of the arm.
The details of the motor mount itself are a post or two all their own that I'll try to get to in the next few days if there's interest. Here's the short version:
![20160414_203914-COLLAGE.jpg 20160414_203914-COLLAGE.jpg](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/04/125260_e6223bff45ac1f0b2a7283633969f984_thumb.jpg)
Upper Left and lower right - original design based on modifications to this existing design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1025343
Upper right - First "from scratch" mostly parametric design.
Lower Left - "Final" version of my mostly parametric design.
The design can still be improved. It's fairly easy to give values that make an unusable mount.
It's also a bit "heavy" for my tastes both at 11g and in looks. But 3D printed materials aren't particularly strong and I want it to hold up. I'm doing my test prints in PLA and will probably fly the PLA version. But I really want to print it in PETG I'm just low on PETG right now so I may have to make due with ABS which will be a real pain to get these parts to part well in.
The last time I built this quad up I just used 2 bolts and a bit of plywood laminated with hotel room key cards to clamp them on. It worked and was probably good for someone who crashed a lot because the motors just got pushed around on the shafts in a crash. It was however very annoying to have to constantly reposition them. These mounts are a bit heavier...but I'm also going to put 2204's instead of 1806's on here this time so I'm printing the motor mounts for strength with 4 perimeters and tops/bottom layers with 30% 3D honeycomb infill. The way this is designed most of the strength should come from the perimeters. So I'd cut back on the infill to save weight before I'd cut back on perimeters if I wanted to shave some weight.
There's also the quad itself to go with those mounts:
![unnamed.png unnamed.png](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/04/124975_5406525f09af609bc40d1391255f761c_thumb.jpg)
The idea is the brown bits are wood. The red bits are polycarbonate sheet or kydex or ply or CF. And the blue is 3D printed. So basically I'm adding a wedge between the plates which will hold the arms in the correct position and angle. Even without the angle this would solve most of the issues I had with the design originally. Eventually I'd like to machine the plates with my MPCNC when I finish it. But for now I'll hand cut them and may simplify them a bit.
It kind of works out like this:
![20160416_003654_001.jpg 20160416_003654_001.jpg](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/04/125264_32675175a02f1d5a5ebaff89ffb72f94_thumb.jpg)
You can see in the sideview that the arms are at 10 degrees.
![20160416_003721.jpg 20160416_003721.jpg](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/04/125263_abf59f17c8d4f30c3a4edba729b8c1ba_thumb.jpg)
I'm short some hardware to do final assembly but will pick it up in the morning. I was originally going to build this with 1806 motors again but mine are getting pretty beat up so putting this new set of YKS 2204 motors on seems like more fun. Plus those are setup with a Sparky2 which means it has a built in openLRS radio...if I can figure out a decent way to mount the antenna and keep it out of the props. But they're also setup with old slow emax "simon series" ESC's
Once I fly it I'll probably put it up on thingiverse...but the github repo will always be the latest (just not necessarily in the master branch)
I'm super open to ideas and suggestions. Better yet - I put it on github for a reason, anyone can fork it and make their own version then share back any changes.
I'm still working on making the main body more parametric and figuring out the best way to get it on Thingiverse as a customizer. I may do a full thing for the entire quad - but then upload the code for the angle block separately by itslef so it can be customized since the customizer won't work with included files.
Anyway I'm having a blast learning what OpenSCAD can do and would love to have some of you guys join in with experimenting. I started to figure out animations but didn't quite get it where I wanted yet: