Stubby Quadcopter

thingiverse

I wanted something that resembled the 450 "Style" frame while having a smaller overall diameter. This frame ended up being around 375mm, and will "fit" up to 10" props. I say "fit" because with a 10" prop, the props will have only about 1cm of clearance in their wash path, and this can cause degraded performance. It would fly well with 8" props on suitably rated motors. I am flying this with an iNav loaded SPRacingF3, 4x Razor32 35A ESCs a Matek PDB, a Eachine VTX, and a Flysky 18ch reciever. The motors are 2212 'parts bin' motors that I believe are around 950kv. I have flown it successfully with 10" props, but if you had something like a 1600-2200kv motor, 8" would work well. Required hardware is basic. M3 hardware (screws, nuts and washers) will do the job. I used M3x18 for the upper leg bolts and M3x50 for through-leg bolts to secure the top and bottom plates together. Various other M3 hardware attach the battery box and motors. For printing, I did the first version in Amazon Basics PLA. I used a 20% infill for the arms and 25% for the center plates. This ended up being VERY strong, and quite heavy (total weight of UAV with everything except batteries was ~700g). I would recommend using a print setting such that you are printing double thick top and bottom layers (1.2mm) and very light infill, perhaps 10-15%. This should be strong enough to fly very well and take a rough landing (perhaps not a full on crash) while being light enough to be maneuverable. On the bottom plate there are some countersunk 6mm holes on the rear. These are for SMA/RP-SMA style connectors to be mounted for external antenna for VTX and/or radio receiver. On the front are two smaller holes, spaced 16mm apart, which will allow mounting of a basic FPV camera. I have designed a simple GoPro style mount that will accept an Action camera for recording of HD video and transmission down to FPV if you have the appropriate cable and VTX. Also included is a new GPS mount.