3D printed light tricopter (PLIGHTRI)

Hello again Flite Testers!

This time, I decided I'd build a more "solid" tricopter. My first scratch-builds were very... umm... crude doesn't even begin to cover it. Jury-rigged is closer to the mark. (See here and here for my previous articles) There's a reason I referred to those design as "a flying tupperware". It flew well enough, but was very fussy about manual adjustments before each flight.

Circumstances for me having changed for the better from my student status, I've been toying around with 3D printing parts for tricopters. It's cheap, it's fast, and it allows for rapid prototyping/replacement of parts.

So I give you my first 3D printed tricopter design, with built-in camera mount and a battery "basket", which whilst not reducing vibrations, at least is an easy and sure way of putting your battery on without having to cinch straps crazy tight. Here is the result:

Besides the rotor-bones landing gear/motor mount, short wooden booms and and the standard 8x4.5 / 1200kV / 18A ESCs from HobbyKing, the interesting part is the flight controller - an Acro Naze from abusemark.com. The Naze is basically a 32-bit chip version of the Arduino (8-bit based) MultiWii platform. The firmware is slightly different, but generally compatible with the MultiwiiConf tool for settings, and it includes a TX/RX set of pins where you can hook up a Bluetooth Module, letting you adjust the settings from an Android phone with a Multiwii-based app.

The picture above was tested while holding the battery on with a simple strap system. I realized it wasn't particularly efficient or secure, so I pulled out the Blender 3D design and designed this "battery basket" to hold it more securely in place.

I'm a big fan of the way Flite Test provides all of their designs openly, and I'm emulating them. If you want to build one, adjust it for your own, whatever, go see this thingiverse page, where I posted the designs for others to print the same parts. Don't hesitate to ask for more details or if I can adjust the design to fit X/Y/Z feature - I'd be more than happy to provide what I can as long as it fits with my view of this tricopter. If you want to take it another direction, feel free! That's what the open-source / open-design movement is about.

I realize not many people have access to a 3D printer, so I'll print and ship copies of this design at cost. Send me a PM if you're interested in this, or customized versions of it. The basic hole setup for the Acro Naze is a square of 40mm on the side, made for M3 bolts. There's enough flexibility with the design that I can adjust the screw pattern for a KK2, Multiwii, APM, whatever board tickles your fancy as long as you can provide me with the right dimensions for it.