Kategorie: Multicopter

So the new carbon fibre props arrived a few days ago. It took some time because the german post is in labour strike at the moment. Every package is arriving late or only possible to pick up at their office.

I had to check the Deutsche Post Office last week to get them. When I opened the package there are a good bunch of propellers I thought. At the first testflight they did some behavours to the TICK I was wondering first. The motors shook and killed some of my motor bumpers. After this flight I checked everything and especially the edges of these props and realized that the props have much burrs on the wings. So the next step was to clean the props to perfect shape. It tooks about 2 hours with a file and sandpaper. After getting this done I started to balance every prop. For this I used a prop balancer from Hobbyking I ordered long time ago. It gave me a good result and the following testflights wroked great until saw againg worn out bumpers on the motor mounts. When the motors are under heavy load the bumpers getting killed. I have some ideas for a solution right now but sticking for the construction of the frame so i will go for a direct mount of the motors first not to waste too much time right now.

I´m facing some problems the last few test flights with my newly introduced motor mounts. The construction is really good and gives many benefits for the most low-vibration frame on the market. The only problem I have is that the bumpers are not strong enough to bridle the power of the motors. It happens after some test flights that the rubber bumpers are worn out and start to get the motors shaking. Although with new bumpers it is a hard indicator that a motor or propeller is not balanced they will shake. I had this when i used the new full carbon props last week. More on this in a new post.

So the rubber has to be more stiff or I have to realize the dampening in a different way. To continue with the construction I am thinking forward to stop the work with the anti vibration of the motors and fix them directly on the frame but I have some more ideas how to decouple the motors. Tests go on…

I ordered a new bunch of propellers out of carbon fibre. The gemfan´s I use right now give good results but the efficiency can be improved with much stiffer props. I´m waiting for the shipping the next few days but so far I am sure the 5030 are not the destination where I´m happy with. The weight with the aluminium frame is still at around 930gr with a huge 5800mAh battery. The carbon fibre frame will be milled the coming days. I´m more exited for the motormounts which are revised yesterday. I wasn´t happy with the wirings of the motors and the space was really less to get more advances. The main frame will have to get the same changes with the milling like the motor mounts to fit correctly in space.

 

Today I saved some time to do testflights with the TICK. It’s really snappy even with the heavy gopro and gimbal is mounted on it. The cam is superb stable even if I compare it to my 650 quad. More stable vids out of a gopro are not possible because it is a setup which is built from ground up to handle everythin like a carm. At the moment there is a video going to youtube to check you for approval. Stay tuned because its made with wide angle 1080p and 60fps. It will take time to upload 2.5gb to youtube.

Yesterday I picked up the final frame from the company Hydrocut in Neustadt bei Coburg. They did really nice work on it with waterjet cutting so the groundplate is only done at the outer lines. I will go on with further improvements like sink the wires into the plate. Further there will be some changes to shrink the weight down to a minimum to get the best results of flight time, sturdiness and response characteristics to commands. With the heavy aluminium prototype I did a flight test 30 minutes ago and get a result of 12 minutes stopping the motors at 10.9V with 1130gr lift off weight. I have to change the settings in the imu for the voltage checking soon because these settings will stop everything too early. I am looking forward to 15 mins of flight time with this tiny heavy lift hexa. I am sure this will be a gamechanger in the market if it will go for final production. Thanks for everyone who is interested in this project so far. I plan to make a funding project for this soon but I’m not sure right now.

Today the first testflight is done on the frame with the final sillouhette. The motors are decoupled right now and to my amazement this tiny hexa is one of the most noiseless setups I ever heard. First the motor mounts were constructed like this only to get less vibrations to the camera. That´s one of the advantages right now. On the other hand it drops down the noise of the motors to a minimum. It´s quiet fun to fly this thing. Really stable, really aggressive but really silent too. The flight controller does not have any problems with this. The motors fit good in their positions but they still are dampended enough to give a really good result. The construction confirms the research and tests which had been done before by me.

Further I found out that the flight controller voltage check is not set at a correct value so the Tick should fly much more longer than expected. the 5800Ah lipo will let it stay in the sky for more than 16:30 minutes. But with the correct settings it can stay more longer. At the moment the settings say that it has to land when 11.0V or less is reached. A 3S lipo can go down to 10.0V without getting damaged. I will test around with it to get the best out of flight time and battery life – I´m sure nobody wants to kill lipos with it.

Today I did a few testflights with different prop setups and one of the setups gives me much more hope for a really stamina setup. I flow 16:30 minutes the first 5 mins really aggressive the rest was in hovering flight. Today the first 2 pieces of frames will be done by waterjet cutting. For tomorrow there is also a plan to produce the motor mounts by CNC milling. With these parts it will be possible to get infos about endurance and stability of the frame. With all this knowledge it will go for further studies of how to get everything to the lowest weight which is possible with this setup.

So different goals achieved right now:

• super slim setup like 35mm height (without battery) CHECK
• flighttimes around 10-15mins or more CHECK
• stabilized cam (I´m sure it will fit but…) OPEN
• superstable setup (if a crash will happen or for packing into a small bag) CHECK

It will not fit in the palm of your hand but gently in the palm of your bag… trust me

see following video but it´s a really early prototype only for testing purposes

As I can tell everybody out there the motors are the most important thing on a multirotor. I tried out different setups but I came for getting the most efficient and versatile setup for THE TICK! Today there were done different tests. I flow 3 lipo packs with 5.8Ah and the UAV is really stable, snappy and aggressive with 930gr starting weight. It is so impressive to me at the moment that I will do further tests.

Like I said before the specs are at the moment:

930gr lift off weight

5800mAh Lipo @ 3S

5×3/5×45 Props

no camera

~15 mins flight time

no enhancements done for reducing aircraft weight at the moment…

… but it´s really snappy for the lift off and flight.

If you are interested in this versatile and stable setup, transportable in a small backpack and stable enough to make professional FullHD videos by a GoPro please feel free to contact me. For actual plannings there will be two prototypes done with which I will do some tests.  But I´m sure the setup will be gorgeous for everybody who knows what is possible with this kind of small multirotors. You don´t need a TBS Discovery, no DJI Multirotor but you can do the same with better results with THE TICK.

EDIT: I did another test with different props and 15:30mins with aggressive flight are within this setup. I think everything I did the last few weeks and months is going for a successful and happy end. So the future plans are now for changing the props for higher efficiency. Props by 5×3 are not the best for this setup.

So what´s the result for you as customers? ~ 15mins flight time, really slim sized formfactor, fits in a backbag, really stable for crashes and best performance for making stable videos. That´s all of the fpv guys are looking for and never been got at the moment.

What will this setup be worth it? please comment…