"Budget Build" AP Quad

The first quad I built was the Anycopter and once I got it in the air I couldn’t wait to get a camera on it. I went ahead and built a new quad with my own design but it still used the fixed camera that was slung from the bottom. Essentially the same as the Anycopter but with a bit more eye appeal. Recently I’ve really wanted to get a gimbal to attach to my quad. I don’t have tons of money to spend on this so I thought I would give one of the cheap $50 Chinese gimbals a try. I bit the bullet and finally ordered the 2 axis gopro gimbal from goodluckbuy.com. Deciding it would be easier to just build a new quad around the gimbal, I designed what I am calling a “budget” AP quad. As seen, this quad (minus radio and camera) comes in at right around $150 for all materials and electronics.

While waiting for the gimbal to arrive, I started working on designing a new quad. There were a few things I wanted to incorporate in to my design. After seeing the quad Eric built for the Naze32 episode, I wanted to integrate the 10 degrees “dihedral” to the arms. I also needed longer legs that gave stability but cleared the view of the camera. I looked at a few AP quads that are already out on the market and really liked a few that 3DR was doing so I took some styling cues from that and came up with the design below.

After I was happy with the CAD in 3D I exported it to 2D in draftsight and proceeded to collect the needed materials.

The material total for the frame is quite cheap. I just used 1/8” hobby plywood from Hobby Lobby. The booms are just ½ x ½ poplar dowels from the hardware store. I used all stainless 3mm hardware.

Here is a photo of the frame being cut out on the laser

Here are all the parts laid out before assembly. Quite a few pieces.

I did a quick build to make sure fit and finish was what I was looking for. It really started to look cool when I got the test build up done.

Once I was happy I tore it down and painted all the parts. I went with a matte black finish.

My last quad was a donner for many of the parts. I did get some new ESCs but I took the motors (turnigy 1400kv), flight controller (KK2) and receiver (lemon RX) from my old quad. Here is a side by side showing them in the process of moving parts over.

Here is a photo while half way along in the build process. I knew it was going to start to get “busy” once I started wiring it all up.

I took the top deck off and wired up the ESCs to the power distribution board. I just use a piece of copper clad circuit board for this. There are a few more “pads” there for installing a diode and switch for future LEDs.

And here it is after it was assembled and ready to fly!

I haven’t had much time to try it yet but the little bit of time I had it in the air it felt quite stable and has a great presence in the air. I look forward to getting some more time behind the sticks on this one and also giving the cheap gimbal a good workout.

Thanks for checking it out!

Justin

AP Quad CAD

Finally got some video from the gimbal. Works decent, definately needs some tweaking. 

Material List:

- one sheet of 1/8" hobby plywood 1x2ft

- 8 1/2" x 5" long poplar dowels (can cut these out of 2 36" dowels)

- 24 M3x30 stainless bolts

- 24 M3 stainless lock nuts

- 4 1/2" long aluminum standoffs

- 8 3/4" long aluminum standoffs

- 24 4-40x.25 bolts (for standoffs) 

All hardware was purchased from McMaster

Electronics:

- 4 turnigy 1400KV motors

- KK2 board

- 4 20A Simon K ESCs (these are an ebay specially, upon opening they are actually 30A and of great quality)

- 1045 GF props

- 2 axis gimbal from Goodluckbuy.com