Inductrix / TinyWhoop - Easy to print, plug-and-play frame replacement

thingiverse

After only a day or two, I cracked my Inductrix frame while flying it around the house. Made repairs, but later broke it again. Time to print a replacement. I tried several designs here and found they were either too annoying to print (lots of supports needed making messy prints), or had designs I didn't like for some reason (mostly ducts). I've been playing with NACA airfoils in both OpenSCAD and Fusion360, so decided to dive into that. Online research led me to the NACA7312 airfoil for ducts, so I combined it with a frame that prints flat, no supports needed. It's basically a drop-in replacement for the stock frame. The screw pins are in the same place, but the ducts are a bit different, so you may need to flex it to get the flight controller in there, but once past the edges of the duct, it fits perfectly. For a mullet-style camera mount, I recommend my TinyWhoop Camera/Vtx mount (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1842589) but anything that fits the stock Inductrix screw holes should work with this frame. As the title says, it's plug-and-play! It has two T-shaped connectors sticking out from the side of the battery plate if you want to reduce weight and use some small rubber bands (e.g. "loom bands") to hold the battery in place. If you want to hold the battery like the original Inductrix, cut those off and use the battery clip that Mr_Disintegrator created for his design: http://www.thingiverse.com/download:2858356 While this frame was inspired by Mr_Disintegrator's design, it was created from scratch in heavily parameterized OpenSCAD. I'm not quite ready to post the scad file because I'm still tweaking it for other motor and prop sizes, but I will at some point. This design is optimized for printing with a 0.4mm nozzle, 0.2mm layer height, 1 shell, and 0% infill. The frame beams, stators, and motor holders are 0.8mm so they'll print solid, while the duct prints hollow in the thicker parts to reduce weight. I strongly recommend printing it in ABS to reduce weight (~25% lighter than PLA). My prints in ABS with these settings come out around 4.5g, which is a bit more than the stock Inductrix but less than the Eachine frame. Print Settings Rafts: Doesn't Matter Supports: No Resolution: 0.2mm Infill: 0% Notes: Recommended print settings: Filament: ABS (~25% lighter than PLA) Nozzle size: 0.4mm Layer height: 0.2mm Infill: 0% Supports: None Rafts: Doesn't matter Post-Printing Since this is printed with only 1 shell and parts of the duct are hollow, you may get some gaps, holes or zits on the sides of the duct. A little careful work with an X-acto will clean up the zits, and I've found that the little gaps (if you have any) don't affect anything.