drone Archives - Perfect 3D Printing Filament

DJI Mavic Mini Drone Stand #3DThursday

The best way to showcase your Mavic Mini.
Two parts, stand and bracket. The bracket can be easily connected to the drone (snaps in). All you need is one M312 or M412 screw (plus nut) to connect the bracket to the pole.

Kākāpō Recovery Technology

From New Zealand’s Department of Conservation via Analytics India Mag:

So in 2019 we’re trialling 3D-printed smart eggs that can emit life-like sounds. We’re hoping they’ll trigger a preparation response in mum at just the right time.

Youbionic: My Drone has the Hands and I Send it to do the Shopping

“My Drone has the Hands and I send it to do the shopping” was the title of the email that Youbionic‘s Federico Ciccarese sent me. Sometimes you can’t beat a subject line. I’ve been a huge fan of Youbionic, the bionic 3D printed robot project, for years now. Just between you and me, I’ll publish these guy’s shopping list if they send it to me. Their open source robot project has led to a lot of great robots and innovative things being developed by people the world over. There is however, a mad hatter portion to the Youbionic team’s innovations that continues to surprise. Not content to stay within their cuddly open source corner, they regularly produce nightmare fuel for us. These are the people who put arms on the already terrifying Spot the robot hellhound, proposed a nice little upgrade for you and me with a potential third or fourth arm, and also a double hand device to give us each more hands.

Technically would you now have three hands, four?

So whenever I get an email from Youbionic one hand goes to open ‘Add New Post’ while the other shakes a bit in trepidation as I open the email. This one did not disappoint because the 3D printing team working hardest on creating a dystopian future through 3D printing has now put hands on a drone. Open up your speakers and help bring in the end of humanity people, because here it is:

The Drone for Handy by Youbionic is completely literally the thing we will see hovering overhead as we cower in the caves as civilization collapses around us.

“WE ARE HERE TO GUIDE THE HUMAN RACE IN THE MOST DIFFICULT PATH THERE IS. MENTAL OBSTACLES ARE WHAT WE WANT TO OVERCOME TO CREATE A NEW WORLD.”

Thus the Youbionic team wants to usher in our doom. Undeterred? You can download the parts and make your own Drone for Handy on the Youbionic site. Sign up and you’ll get Google Drive access to the STLs for free. Not sure why all of the shareables sites are sleeping and not trying to get Youbionic on their platform. Unless of course they’d prefer to limit their camping to video games and don’t want Hitchcock’s the Birds with Drones to become humanity’s greatest new problem.

Drone For Handy
by ciccarese
on Sketchfab

Rarely have seriously bad ideas been brought to us in so beguiling a manner as they have in the hands of Youbionic. Part of me really wants these guys to succeed and get millions of adherents to build their robots. Part of me thinks of all the wonderful prosthetics and aids for humans that such a development could create. But, there’s this spidey sense thing that I get from these guys that makes me very worried.

The above clip is literally what is playing in my head right now. Only instead of comparatively harmless crows, it is a flock of Youbionic Drone for Handys that is bearing down on us. Only they don’t make bird sounds like crows but they sound kind of like scissors snipping, like from Coraline. Oh great, now I won’t be able to sleep for weeks. Download the STLs here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[Images: Youbionic]

What Drone Parts Can You 3D Print?

Drones are quickly becoming a standard fixture in skies throughout the world. While most drones are small and portable — akin to the common radio-controlled toy plane — aerospace companies and tech firms are building larger, more robust drones to take on all manner of tasks, from delivery to security.

3D printing stands to play a substantial role in how drones are manufactured and deployed in the future. And if the forecasts are correct, there will be a huge demand for 3D printed drone accessories as the robots become more mainstream and we find new, exciting applications for their technology. Here’s a rundown of the ways you can modify your drones with 3D printing.

3D Printing Drone Parts

If you intend to use 3D printed drones as part of your business, or if you’re merely interested in what it would be like to make one, here are a few of the essential drone parts you can make with even a basic 3D printer:

Propellers
Drone frames and equipment housing
Landing gear
Protective guards
Exoskeleton attachments
Antenna holders
Mounts for cameras and other payloads

There are numerous benefits to 3D printing these types of drone parts, aside from the cost. Accidents happen, and if you break a piece of your drone, there’s no need to order a new part if you have a 3D printer available.

If you decide to upgrade your drones with new printable parts, you don’t need to send your drone away to be worked on. Simply print out the latest upgrades and integrate them.

3D Printing Drone Accessories

Of course, there are plenty of other things related to drone use which you can 3D print, aside from the essential components of your drones, including:

Carrying cases
Radio signal enhancers
Targets, landing pads, and cones
Tables and displays
Repair tools
Sun shades for mobile device controllers
Remote control unit housings
Landing gear extenders

Depending on how you intend to use your drones and what you learn in the field, you can even come up with your own accessories to add to your 3D printing list.

Creating Opportunities with Drone Accessory Production

With so many different types of drones on the market and more coming out all the time, there’s more opportunity than ever for businesses to get a piece of the drone industry. Whether you intend to use drones to deliver services to customers, or if you want to be a drone provider yourself, 3D printing can help you harness the benefits of next-generation automation.

Overall, 3D printing provides five key opportunities:

Reduced costs
Reduced timelines
Reduced errors
Agility in the face of competition
On-demand production

Whichever way you apply drone technology in your business, you should consider 3D printing options so you can take advantage of these benefits. By tapping into 3D printing early, you’ll have more opportunities to take advantage of the next iteration of this technology.

There’s no better time to deploy new 3D printed drone accessories, whether you intend to sell them yourself or incorporate them into your existing business.

The post What Drone Parts Can You 3D Print? appeared first on Shapeways Magazine.

Bridgeport Research Duo Create and Analyze 3D Printed Frame for Quadrotor Drone

Quadrotor frame assembly in exploded view.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are agile and resilient enough to be piloted, and monitored, from remote distances. With four flying dimensions and six degrees of freedom for pitch, roll, space, and yaw, drones can be used for a wide variety of applications, such as farming, documenting 3D information about historic archaeological sites, photography, military and defense, acting as first responders during natural disasters and rescue operations, and 3D printing.

Multirotor drones have multiple fixed wings and have a high level of maneuverability, and are classified further based on factors like position, orientation, and number of rotors. A pair of researchers from the University of Bridgeport recently published a paper, titled “Design and Analysis of 3D Printed Quadrotor Frame,” detailing their work using 3D printing to create the frame for a quadrotor drone.

3D printed drone assembly bottom view

The abstract reads, “This research emphasizes more on 3D printing a quadrotor with ‘X’ shaped frame. We built a CAD model of drone frame using SOLIDWORKS, following that; we performed three types of finite analysis 1. Static structural, 2. Impact analysis, and 3. Modal analysis. The drone frame is simulated and analysed under various boundary conditions such as lift, drag, and thrust till the optimized results of minimum displacement, a factor of safety is achieved. We printed the frame of drone on PRUSA I3 Mk3 3D printer by using ABS-PC and carbon fiberglass materials as the filament.”

The researchers designed a CAD model of their X-framed drone in SOLIDWORKS using multiple constraints, including:

length of the propeller, which determines the length of an arm
motor rotor diameter and electronic speed controller width, which contribute to determining a drone’s arm width

Highlighted surface area is the fuselage

They designed the arms of the drone to translate force away from the fuselage, which helps electronic components maintain minimal damage if the drone has an accident or fails. The fuselage of a drone is “the eye” of its electronic components, like the receiver, power distribution board, and flight controller, and the duo designed a housing to protect the fuselage’s components in the event of a crash.

The dimensions of their drone frame, which was 3D printed on a PRUSA I3 Mk3 3D printer out of carbon fiberglass and ABS-PC, are 175.14 x 171.42 x 48.75 x 226 mm.

The researchers explained, “To perform FE analysis, the forces acting on a frame are determined, which are 1.The Weight of the frame and all the electronic components on it normal to the ground, 2. Lift force direction is a resultant between thrust and vertical take-off, towards the direction of motion, 3. Thrust generated by the propeller and motor towards the direction of motion and 4. Drag force acting in opposite direction of motion.”

Strain deformation

The researchers manually calculated and applied the forces acting on the 3D printed frame during simulation, which resulted in three plots: Von Mises stress, displacement, and strain deformation. They were able to run a sequences of cycles in SOLIDWORKS where the drone crash-landed, and gained simulation results by compiling all of the collected data. Additionally, they also completed a static structural analysis – a phenomenon called plasticity – by considering a non-linear analysis based on the materials used to make the frame and the rate of deformation, and completed a modal analysis of the 3D printed frame in order to measure the dynamic excitation caused by vibrating motors.

“A 3D printed quadrotor frame with safety factor 2.5 is attained and various finite element analysis performed on the frame are distinctly mentioned and plotted in the figures. Further, we can 3D print a 3- axis gimbal and attach it to our quadcopter for aerial photography. Also, we can upgrade them by attaching few thermal imaging sensors and gas sensors to measure radiation and air pollution at certain heights,” the researchers concluded. “This shows the main advantage of the 3D printed quadcopters and makes them stand distinct to the market-ready drones. We can customize them to make them work in any environment just by changing the printing filaments.”

3D printed drone assembly isometric view.

Co-authors of the paper are Sai Mallikarjun Parandha and Zheng Li.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

Duke Students Create Chocolate Drone #drone #droneday

Will take one dark chocolate, 85%+ cocoa, thank you! From The Chronicle:

The idea of an edible drone initially came up a year ago while Thakkar was having coffee with a friend. Whenever he had time, he said he would make it happen. Thakkar mentioned the idea in passing to his friends Lindner and Succop.

“Knowing Anuj is the kind of guy that relentlessly pursues an idea, no matter how far-fetched it seems, until it’s accomplished, I didn’t even question him,” Succop wrote.

While the three students were at Duke over the summer, they became more and more motivated to start prototyping an edible drone. They attempted with three other foods before deciding on chocolate. They explained that cheese was too ugly and oily, jell-o was too heavy and bread was too difficult to mold. However, chocolate was moldable, light and appealing.

The team initially tried to construct the drone using a 3D-printed negative mold, which involves pouring melted chocolate into the mold, Lindner said. However, they ran into issues when trying to remove the plastic mold because the chocolate kept breaking.

Instead, the team used a positive 3D-printed mold, where they poured the chocolate around the mold and let it solidify. They then removed the plastic, leaving a chocolate shell. Lindner explained that they modified a drone by removing as much of the shell as they could and replacing it with chocolate, while leaving the electronics.

Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.

University of Leeds’ Concept System to Use Drones and 3D Printing to Repair Pot Holes #drone #droneday

From University of Leeds on YouTube:

A system to use drones to scan and then repair pot holes in roads using a 3D printing attachment was demonstrated by a team from the University of Leeds as part of the Robots for Resilient Infrastructure Robotic Challenge Event that took place on 27 to 28 June at Weetwood Hall, Leeds.

#3DPrinted Quadcopter, JumpDrive #drone #droneday

From ebrithiljonas on Thingiverse:

Quadcopter designed around the Following components:

Emax MT2204 Motors

TopFuel LiPo 20C-ECO-X 2400mAh

Naze32 Flight Controller

Goal:

The goal of this project is to design a completely 3D-printed quadcopter with replaceable arms. Also a frame which isn’t complete open like most of the small race drones.