Project aims to provide high rigidity and light weight quadcopters frame using 3D printing technology from ABS plastic
The main ideas and ways of their implementation
1. Design similar to the wildlife more visually attractive and often optimal in terms of strength. For body, motor beams and supports, I used sequentially following programs: Autodesk Inventor (initial surface)-> Rhino->Grasshopper(Cytoskeleton and other plug-ins)->T splines for Rhino (convert mesh to t-splines mesh then T splines mesh to surface) -> Autodesk Inventor (final part). Multi-stage design process takes a long time (counting t-splines took time up to 12 hours). Due to lack of time I was limited in variants of design. In my opinion turned out that somewhere between bionics and steampunk :-)
2. ABS does not have sufficient rigidity to effectively resist bending load. Items printed on the 3D printer because of the layered structure are more mediocre performance. We need to build a structure like the sailing ships: tensile load should take strong rope rigging. For quadcopters role rigging can perform braid fishing line. For example fishing line 0.4 mm, tensile strength up to 30 kg. This braid fishing line is very flexible in contrast to monofilament line. This quadcopters strength provided by the rigging of the fishing line plastic only provides a form.