Small 3-D Printed Quadcopter Design

Isometric view of the quadcopter design.

In my ENGR 423 Drone Science Fundamentals class, I learned both the fundamental designs of a quadcopter, using a small hand-held drones as an example, and programming using Anaconda's Spyder. In my class, I paired up with my friend Jason Cuenca as the class works was designed to be group oriented.

Problem

The mid-term project for the drone class is to either redesign the small quadcopter or program it to fly under a chair autonomously. My partner and I opted to redesign the drone as we did not have extensive knowledge when it came to programming a drone. For those who opted for redesign, the small drones used in class were lent by the professor to help out.

For the project to redesign the drone, several criteria had to be met. First, the small drone's motherboard, motors, battery and LED light must fit inside the new drone. Second, the redesigned drone must be designed to carry a small orange cube. Third, it must be 3-D printed and presented. The fourth, extra credit, task is to design and 3-D print a cage and/or rotor blades for the quadcopter. More attention was given to the rotor blades since, according to my professor at the time, only one group has managed to successfully design and 3-D print it for their drone.

Solution

Jason and I disassembled the small drone to examine the dimensions of the motherboard, motors, battery and LED light. We concluded that the new drone design had to be first designed around the inner components we used. Since the motherboard was a square shape, we opted to have the quadcopter have an X-shape design. Jason worked on designing the legs, cage and bars needed for the quadcopter to carry the cube. I worked on designing the cage and rotor blades. We designed all of the parts in SolidWorks.

When we finished our designs, we 3-D printed our drone parts in the NJIT Makerspace. From there, Jason and I examined and assembled the parts together. Any design flaws that were found was later corrected and a second drone was 3-D printed.

Results