Tues Feb 18- Brainstorming: On this day I began to think about what I wanted to design. After all, the challenge was to design and produce anything I wanted. Since I am very interested in drones and I enjoy building and flying them, I decided I wanted to design and produce my own frame which is something I have wanted to do for a long time. This frame would be aimed towards being a freestyle frame, used for videography instead of racing. For materials, all drone frames are made of carbon fiber due it being lightweight but also extremely durable which is important in the case of crashes.
Thurs Feb 20- Research and Planning: On this day I began to research the dimensions of common drone parts and sizes to use in my CAD model. I got the dimensions for mounting of the electronics to be 30mm x 30mm and the motors which have a standardized mounting pattern. I began to look into and think about how the electronics would fit on the frame and also how the shape of the frame effects performance. Overall, I came out with a frame that would use five inch propellers (size of propellers is a common way of identifying the size of drones) and support a 30×30 stack of electronics as well as 2207 motors. It would be able to hold a 4s 1300mah battery top mounted and potentially hold a gopro as well.
Monday Feb 24- Prototype: This was the first day I had the parts properly exported from Fusion into dxf files in illustrator. As the only viable material we had available was approx. 5mm plywood, I used this to get a good idea of how the pieces would fit together and if the holes were all in the right place. As expected I ran into immediate problems as I assembled the first version of the frame. The holes for the standoffs were clearly too close to the outside of the top plate and would create an extremely weak area in the plate. For version two, this was fixed and the main plate and top plate were widened overall to make them stronger and less likely to break in thinner areas. In version two, I noticed a second problem after thinking about how the electronics would be mounted. The bottom plate blocked the holes for putting in the screws to mount the electronics. This was a simple change in CAD and the frame was recut to have these holes included.
Tues Feb 25- Prototype: I continued to think about any potential problems before I cut it out of carbon fiber and realized a problem with the mounting of the motors. Originally there were two mounting positions on the arm to account for some motors which have different orientations of holes than others. However I realized If i made these two holes into a pill shape it would make it easier to align the motor into the holes and would help with ease of assembly. After this change along with all of the previous changes I decided this would be the final assembly.
Wed Feb 26- Testing: On this day I got all of my electronics and got to rough assemble them to make sure everything fit as it should. As expected, the electronics fit well and everything assembled with relative ease. I could not spot and noticeable problems, and I was satisfied with the frame. The plan is to use the water-jet cutter in order to cut the frame out of carbon fiber, however we want to test the cutter with wood first to make sure the alignment and settings are dialed in as the carbon fiber plates were expensive.
Thursday Feb 27- Additional pieces: On this day I went to GCAD and used tpu flexible filament to make some additional parts that would help with the mounting of the antennas and camera, and overall make the build cleaner.
Saturday Feb 29- Refining and Changes: I was using a system of electronics that I have never used before, and was having many problems with getting the motors to spin properly. Therefore I changed to using an older set of electronics from one of my older drones, however I know how to program these electronics and had a much easier time getting it set up with these electronics. This was not much of a set back but it did cause some frustration with assembly.
Sunday March 1- Final changes: This is the last day we have to work on our projects so I used to day to clean everything up and make it presentable. I also took a few pictures of my CAD model and illustrator files to show the process of its creation and overall assembly. Overall, this was a good learning process as I have never designed a drone frame before. Although It will not fly when it is made of wood due to too much bend in the arms which would cause weird flight characteristics, when it is made of carbon fiber I am very confident it will work very well.
Future changes: After realizing that this frame would only theoretically fit 4.5″ propellers, I want to extend the arms so that they can fit standard 5″ props. This would mean extending out the arms so that the propellers don’t run into the standoffs.