I Guess I'm into Drones Now
I made a small drone body so I wouldn't feel buyer's remorse for my 8 y/o 3D printer
I wanted to do a quick day project this past weekend to utilize my 3D printer a little more than I already do (which is not at all). I asked my parents for a Printrbot simple metal as a graduation gift after High school. As far as 3D printers go, this thing has proven to be a solid tool. Coincidentally, I also got a cheap drone from radioshack as a graduation gift, and it's not bad for what it is.
Fast Forward 8 years and I have an idea to design print a drone body to challenge my limited CAD skills and fire up the 3D printer again. I started by removing the plastic body off the radioshack drone.
I took the disassembled drone and laid it out on graphing paper. There, I was able to measure out how big it would be. It was so small.. it has a 7 cm width overall. It was the perfect size to be able to print and iterate on. My printer does move slow, even by 3D printing standards, so the smaller the better.
https://www.tinkercad.com/things/emFi3TziBbS-fantastic-sango-crift
I designed out a body that was light and sturdy, utilizing a voronai generator to remove material from the base. I took a bit of a risk and designed the motor mounts to allow me to snap the motors into them. I didn't know if this would work, so I printed a couple tests to see how it worked. I got to an iteration I was decently happy with, so I went ahead and started printing the full thing.
3 misprints later, I finally got something that was pretty solid.
the snaps worked on 3 of the 4 arms, which is more than I was expecting. for the 4th, I will have to secure it with some hot glue and zip ties and see how it holds up.