62 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
62 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
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title: Anlyea Quadcopter - Design phase
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date: 2016-04-18 00:00:00
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---
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I started working on a custom Quadcopter for fun. I started from the
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[Crossfire by MickeyB](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:234867) from which
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I redesigned large portions to better fit my needs.
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I wanted a somewhat smaller design so that it fits inside a Rako box for
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transport. I started using the original arms but then, the original center
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piece was too large for the Quad to fit inside the 600mm x 400mm x 120mm
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Rako box I had on hand. As the difference was not that large, I decided
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to design a new replacement part using [OpenSCAD](http://www.openscad.org)
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because, hey, why not ?
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If you don't know OpenSCAD, it's a program and a language to describe and
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design 3D objects. Instead of drawing like you would usually, you program
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what the object looks like using operations and primitive objects. In my
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case, in this object, the hole for the existing arm can be described as
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four 3mm holes for the screws that will go through the arms.
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I decided to create a module that will take the angle of the arm as a parameter
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so that the module can be instanciated four times with the different angles.
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module arm_hole(angle) {
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rotate([0, 0, angle]) {
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translate([-12.5, -14, 1.9])
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cylinder(d = 3, center = true, h = 4);
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translate([ 13 , -14, 1.9])
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cylinder(d = 3, center = true, h = 4);
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translate([-12.5, 11.5, 1.9])
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cylinder(d = 3, center = true, h = 4);
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translate([ 13 , 11.5, 1.9])
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cylinder(d = 3, center = true, h = 4);
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}
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}
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I continued to redesign the central parts as needed: One top plate, one
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bottom plate, a new battery holder that can be mounted on the bottom, an
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adapter for the flight controller on top, ... This continued until I only
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kept the arms.
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The first flight was ... chaotic to say the least. As it was my first design,
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I was thinking about a lot of details that would prove to be useless or
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wrong. For example, I wanted to put the battery on the bottom because it
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was the only place where there was some room left. And for some reason I
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wanted to reduce the vibrations to the battery. If you already designed
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or even tried a Quadcopter, you will see the missing part in my reasoning:
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The battery is the heaviest part of the copter and it was moving as a
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pendulum below the copter as the flightcontroller was frantically trying
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to correct the level of the craft. Not enough to crash it downright, but
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enough to get really rough rides with autolevel and sluggish ones with
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manual control of the level.
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The Anlyea copter is still in the design phase as I try more designs that
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are readily available, print them and study how they fly. I will post a
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new article with the full designs once it can fly for longer than 10 seconds
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and it doesn't repeatedly crash into the nearest pool, but for now, it
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sits confortably into its Rako case.
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