5/16 (8mm) Rod Based MultiWii Quadcopter

cults3d

There are a lot of other quads here on Thingiverse. I started by building the Pl2Q Hugin by Swepet but I routinely was crashing it hard enough to break its arms. I decided to migrate to something a bit more able to bounce without breaking and be faster to fix even when I do crash. The electronic setup of this is the one I used from my Hugin and is heavily based on Swepet’s work on the PL1Q Vampire. The frame of this is a continuation of Octovir’s work on his carbon fiber arrow shaft based frame for an Arducopter. Unlike many of the quads here I can say exactly what parts I purchased and used in this if other wants to make one from scratch. I have had a few catastrophic crashes and even in the worst cash I’ve had the quad repaired faster than I’ve had the battery recharged. This even includes print time of new parts when required. Originally I wanted to go with aluminum arms but sourcing 5/16 aluminum rod locally wasn’t possible. I used left over tool steel rods from building my printer and even with that weight it flew fine. Those were a bit on the over kill side so now that I’ve toned down my rate of hard landings I’ve switched to all wooden dowels. It only takes ~5mins to replace a broken arm now and ~30mins to reprint and replace a leg both of which cost less than $.25. The frame is considerably more rugged then I thought it would be. In my worst crash I nailed a tree at full speed 3 stories up and it tumbled straight down. I saw that it landed right side up so I just gave it a go on taking off again and it was still able to fly around. I ended up breaking 2 wooden pieces, a leg and mangled a prop bad enough it needed replacing. Even with all that damage and the battery dangling loose below it, it could fly. On the limping, wobbly side but still… Even that was fixed before the battery was charged. I tried to make the legs shock absorbing and I can tell you that subjectively it can crash fairly hard and still be undamaged. Update 7/23/12: I added a new version of the legs. When I originally tested them I made them such that in hard crashes the leg and the wooden arm would break at about a 1:1 rate and then backed a bit off the leg strength since I would rather replace the legs. I decided to make the legs a bit stronger now since I haven’t broken an arm in a while but I still go through a number of legs. Update 10/24/12: Added my camera mount. It's based on the 808 camera mount by kenwshmt; which is now in the ancestors list. STL added in the top level of the easy to print (support-less but will need glue to assemble) print I used. Glue-less and separate pieces STL's are included with the scad in the zip. You will need the STL from kenwshmt's thing to render the scad directly. The camera I'm using was purchased from the supplier in kenwshmt's thing. It's only a $10 camera and has quality that's representative of that. That is to say that it's perfectly adequate for a flight recorder but don't plan on any nice photography. Sample video from on board camera: http://youtu.be/sxnny5DqIak