Fun With Carbon Fiber

Looks great! Good work.

You would be a fool to not make a bunch of those to sell. They are the most blinging deflectors I have ever seen. You could sell 1000 pairs by Xmas in so cal alone
Professional work.
Mike

Thanks again, everyone!

I infused another set last night. They'll be comming out of the mold today if anyone wants them.

They sure do look good on my KLR.

Just curious.....can you pm me how much you want for them?

Beautiful work! I suspect you put more effort into learning and perfecting the process than many so called professionals!

Jim

I've always wanted to learn to do work with fiberglass and CF. Cool thread.

Post edited for good taste.

PM sent.

Thanks for hanging out, guys!

Project #8: Designing and Building a Multicopter Frame

Of course this is a motorcycle forum, but this is a thread about composites and how that stuff is made. To be more specific and further from the pourpose of this forum, this project has everything to do with radio controlled awesomeness.

If you are into the RC scene at all, than chances are you have heard of multicopters, quadcopters, and the like. To put it simply, they are not your grand dad's, or even your dad's RC toy. They are computer driven, complex machines that fly like never before.

If you aren't into the RC scene, follow this thread and you will be soon.

Quadcopters have traditionally been simple platfors or frames with a few key pieces of electronics mounted to the hub with 3, 4, 6, or 8 arms radiating out from the center. At the end of each of these arms is an eletric motor with a fixed pitch propeller.

Pilots of these craft are keen to strap on micro video cameras that transmit the video back to the pilot allowing them to fly the copter as if they were sitting in the pilots seat. This is very awesome tech, and it works very well for less money than you might think.

Check out this video to see what this F-irst P-erson V-iew, or FPV flying is all about.
<IFRAME height=480 src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lT2kgi5_sII" frameBorder=0 width=853 allowfullscreen></IFRAME>

Right about now you might be saying to yourself, "hey, that look a lot like them there drones they been talkin' about on the news lately". This quote is in fact exactly what the news has been talking about. These things are real, little "drones".

Enough with the intro; let's get down to the meat of it.

Like I mentioned before, historically multicopters have been built around simple frames. Glue some sticks together, slap on some motors, a battery and a receiver and you're good to go. But what if it rains? What if you crash in water, or if you just want to land in the water? What if you want something more substantial to look at than a few sticks flying around? "Hey Joe, did you just see them sticks fly by?" If you're the guy flying that multicopter just then, you might feel really bad that those guys weren't the least bit impressed with your state of the art flying machine. Don't fret, man! If you're that guy, we're working on the solution for you.

Now it is important to keep in mind that there are a small number of people out there that have built enclosed frames for multirotors before. Generally, from my research, they have done a fair job, but I see a number of ways that they could improve on their designs and darnit, I'm going to try.

My goals for this project are:
-design a frame that will be easy enough to install electonics into.
-make it from scratch. This means building the plug, making a mold, infusing the parts, and assembeling the final parts.
-I want it to look like a 'drone' in my eyes. Not like some toy that has a fake cockpit with a little dude flying around inside of it. I want it to look like the government is watching you from the treetops while you eat your chicken picknick at the park. You get the idea.
-I want it to be light, solid, and fast.
-I want it to float. It would be very cool to be able to land this thing in water, and I think that I can do that without too much trouble. The motors can get wet and fly just fine BTW.

That's the list so far, but I may add to it, or delete items depending on how well this build goes.

Let's get down to the build.

I want to make this plug out of MDF for a couple of reasons. First let me say that I have never worked with MDF in this capacity, so it's all new to me and a great learning experience.

MDF is easy to shape, but not too easy to shape. I made the handguard deflectors from foam, and I really like the foam, but you can get carried away with shaping it and shave too much off. So MDF slows you down in this respect. It also comes in sheets that you can glue together and cut with a band saw for example to get a rough shape.

I wanted to conduct a little test to see how the MDF was to cut and shape. I made a little paper template in the shape of what I thought a multicopter fuse would look like. It in fact turned out to look more like a bar of soap in the rough shape of the Star Ship Enterprise, but I digress.

I spray glued the paper template down to one piece of MDF, then spray glued the two pieces of MDF together. From there I cut out the rough shape of the paper template with the jig saw. Once the rough shape was cut out, I sanded to the lines on the paper. Then I went at it with sand paper and the Dremel tool.

This is what I ended up with.




The MDF cuts and shapes so nicely. I'll be using it to make our multicopter plug, and many more plugs in the future. However it is super dusty, so if you can, do your shaping outside.

Once I was done with my test shaping, I gently pried the two pieces appart at the spray glued joint.


From here, you could glue the two halves down to a nice smooth surface, primer and polish, apply mold release, lay your mold, and when you pull your mold you'll have two molds of each half of the part. Lay these parts up, trim them, glue them together and you have a finished part.


That's the jist of this project. We'll make the plugs, make the molds, make the parts, and hopefully end up with an awesome little flying machine.

Stay tuned...

Wow, how much for a set of those deflectors?

Can you link to the hand guards they fit?

Those would be a very unique addition to my Bandit.

Wow!
Your multicopter will be fantastic!
I flew rc aircraft, powered and gliders...
30 years ago. I just figured it out.
(where have the years gone????)

I got bored with flying from the ground looking up.
I wanted to be flying and looking down.
So, I started flying hang gliders

Having hung up my harness many years ago I still miss flying.
Flight Sim got boring after awhile.

I have not heard of First Person View RC before and it looks fantastic!
I am going to learn more about it now, thanks to you.

Your frame molds look perfect. Modern purposeful shape too.
Will you mount the motors on struts sticking out from the fuse?
What are the dimensions?
Looking at the keyboard in the picture makes it look tiny.

I am eager to see more!

Some safety glasses and a scatter shield around that mason jar would be a safe bet.

You have come a fantastic long way since you first asked me for advise. I do not ever recall having any people I have taught, advance so incredibly fast. Kudos to you. That said There are a few things I feel obligated to mention. You need to spend some time studying the copyright laws, and please do not take this as a bad thing, but as fast as you go with this, last thing I would like you to see is the letters coming in, asking you to seize and desist. May I offer the following opinion, as this is a principle I have held on to since I started many moons ago. It is quite simple, unlike the copy right laws, if you are going to give a piece, and receive any compensation.... ( does not matter if it is Coors Light, beef jerky, or any monitory donations) then you should make it yours from scratch. Ie.... Mould up without having any physical input from any other manufacture. It does not matter to me what you decide, but I would like you to be very successful.... I really do, so please don't take this the wrong way. I think you are doing awesome, and would love to bring this out, before the letters, and pm's begin. That said.... onward with the Dark side Fabbing.....

Hi Evan! PM sent.

i don't like pretty farkles, or exceedingly expensive motorcycles, or most things for that matter.

but

these are beautiful. reallllly beautiful. you should sign them permanently somehow. if you have a multi-million dollar motorcycle parts business someday(or not), it would be badass to see your own early stuff show up on a bike.

you know ?

Thanks again everyone!

If you haven't messed around with those Posca paint pens, they really are great. Check em out.

Yes and no.... I will give you an example....... If you use a moose racing bend piece of aluminum to create a composite over, you expose yourself to in this case moose racing, who could claim royalties. Do this while picturing said procedure on a public forum, and it now is chiseled in stone. Do the same procedure per your own bend aluminum piece...... Nothing. That becomes more so if you simply made a print of a whole moose guard...... You get the drift. Now that is a far out scenario, I know, but you are at the mercy of in this case moose racing. I am proud to say, I have never gotten any issues, by observing the above example.