Home Forums Everything about the Tricopter V4 What would you change about the Tricopter V3 kit?

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  • #8348
    Terje
    Moderator

    CNC machining the tilt mechanism would be very labor intensive as the spline for the servo is pretty advanced.

    A much less expensive solution would be to print the part in Taulman 645 nylon, which is “only” 3x as expensive as ABS. The print time should be roughly the same though.

    Sadly I have no way of testing the Taulman 645 nylon, as my Solidoodle 4 can’t print at 238C+ temperatures required to print nylon.

    #8350
    hsamuels
    Participant

    Easier to fold:

    The wires are always in danger of being cut when the booms are folded. As a result, I never fold them for transportation, which really would be nice. I wonder if power (and signal!) distribution traces can be printed on the frame in such a way as to make it easy to fold, and also even more elegant!

    The name!

    How about Windecopter? Or Y0 (pronounced Why not)?

    #8368
    dockman
    Participant

    Would be cheaper to get the parts injection molded then to get them CNC milled. There are a number of companies out there that can do small production runs of injection molded of parts.

    #8387
    Rotorblade
    Participant

    A second pre-drilled hole on the mid-frame and arm for those guys not wanting to drill their own and go with the friction-lock method. I had my tricopter arms fold on me twice and cause a very mild crashes, I guess I am not a fan of the friction-lock method yet. I still consider myself a tricopter newb. I drilled some holes and have the arms secured now and flies fine.

    Thank you David!

    #8391
    Tiernan85
    Participant

    I initially had the same issues and couldn’t get my booms to stay in place very well. For me, it was simple enough to fix. All I had to do was tighten the one screw that went through the boom so that it started having some resistance when trying to move it. One this was done I could then tighten the “tensioner” screw until I was happy with how it stayed in place. Now it works just as David intended. Maybe yours needs the same. Prior to that I also dremeled two slots into the frame to fit some zipties. Yea you gotta cut them if you want to fold it but they’re a fraction of a penny. I dont actually use them now that I figured out how to set it up propery. Here’s some pics of what I did initially.

    #8396
    ChamikaJp
    Participant

    Hi David

    +1 for a stronger tilt mechanism. I stripped 2 of them from the thread where the servo fits to the tilt mount. Other than that I haven’t faced any problems. Will the naze32 video coming out soon david??

    Thanks
    Cjp

    #8412
    Matti
    Participant

    Couple of additional items for the parts list: a USBasp programmer and antenna boom. The former for flashing the KK-mini board (and possibly ESCs), and latter for holding the receiver antenna in a nice upright position. The antenna boom can of course be improvised from any random stuff, but the USBasp programmer is something that can’t be replaced that easily, and as a returning RC hobbyist (read: noob) I don’t have one.

    I’ve now more or less completed the assembly (sans the electronics flashing and setting up) – it’s a great kit and great guide video!

    #8417
    youmanskids
    Participant

    I came across a simple DIY tilt mechanism on youtube, looks simple and strong and would work well on this tricoper.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifK3y-rE7KM&spfreload=1

    hope this helps some. Roger

    #8421
    Robert C
    Participant

    @youmanskids

    I am not a big fan of that design because all forces will act on the servo itself, whereas in the current kit the assembly can hold itself in place, the servo is only used to turn the thing. I think you will wear out the servo in a matter of hours.

    @ Anyone else;

    Everyone is complaining about the tilt not being strong enough, but David claims he had 70+ hours on it.

    Are you sure the tilt mechanism isn’t just destroyed by the loctite, rather than a good part just breaking? I replaced mine because when I checked for it the loctite had literally eaten some bits away.

    I am not saying the current tilt is flawless, but I find it strange that David got so much time out of it.

    Injection molding would be probably a good alternative.

    #8422
    Terje
    Moderator

    Injection molding is a pretty expensive production method to set up. The forces acting on the tilt mechanism when the rear motor is in one of the end positions are pretty strong. If the top tilt mechanism does not break, the gears in the servo will. It is a $15 servo versus a $9 tilt mechanism. A good alternative might be the top tilt mechanism as a standalone item in the webshop, should be about $3? Maybe an option to upgrade to a nylon version for those wanting to take the risk of destroying the servo. Once the RCExplorers figure out which parts will break in a crash, it will be easier to order these parts as part of the initial order securing more airtime (and giving David the opportunity to streamline the production)

    #8443
    G.P.
    Participant

    To Terje: Please post pictures of your build. I engineer everything for better performance and I like your ideas. You sound like you know a thing or two.

    #8450
    johnmw
    Participant

    although i believe there will always be room for improvement, i like the v3 as it is. simple design, very practical concept.
    if any, some refinements.
    i’d like to see a penta-copter dragonfly kind, not exactly a V4 at that perhaps.

    #8453
    Terje
    Moderator

    I honestly think Davids kit is the best performing kit you can get. It is optimized for lowest weight, quickest repair and longest flight time. Much like a forumla 1 racing car.

    Problem is, I can’t drive a formula 1 racing car 🙂 I need power steering, airbags and anti-spin 😉

    Every mod I make to the kit adds weight at the cost of loss of agility and flight time, added inertia in a crash resulting in more broken parts. Since I have a 3D printer and a lot of LiPos, that is an acceptable tradeoff for me 🙂

    I normally share my designs on Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/Motorpixiegimbals/designs)

    #8466
    Patrick
    Participant

    The tilt mechanism is a great design. Let me first say that! It works really well. It could benefit from more strength, I agree with the other comments. Mine broke when I hit a tree branch. I was going very fast. The tilt mech broke right under the motor, leaving the rest of it still attached to the boom. The area where it broke was not quite hollow inside, but was a honeycomb situation. My thought is that if it were stronger, the mechanism itself wouldn’t have been the weak point, and the zip ties would have been able to do their job, saving the tilt. Down the road, I’m sure there will be a revision of extraordinary magnitude.

    The rear of the kit is quite stout. I have had two pretty solid crashes and the only casualty was the tilt.

    #8469

    Thank you all for your feedback! It’s really valuable to me and you are really helping improving the experience for everyone. Thank you.

    I looked into injection a while ago and the mould cost and setup is expensive and time consuming. The risk of investing a large sum of money and receiving a bad product would kill the company as I don’t have (and didn’t have) the overhead to survive such a loss.

    I’m looking into CNC milling the pieces as well as printing in nylon (anyone know a where to get black nylon that doesn’t warp to much or sucks up moisture?)

    I’ve spent the past couple of days to really dive down into the tail mechanism durability.
    Originally I printed the tilt mechanism with 30% infill and 1.2mm wall thickness. I later (about a month ago) started printing them at 100% infill which did increase the strength somewhat.

    I think I’ve just been incredible lucky with the one I have on my tricopter. It’s still going strong after just under 100 hours in the air and around 30 or so crashes, some minor, some large.

    I took around 15 tilt mechanisms at random and tested the durability with different methods. I found that the adhesion between the layers were weaker than expected. There aren’t that much material holding the piece together around the spline and the layer adhesion not being optimal definitely makes the piece weaker than intended.

    The printer I’m using have 2 built in cooling-fans that really help printing gaps and in mid air a lot easier. It also makes the surface look a bit nicer. I optimized the print settings after the filament to get a strong and good looking part and started printing for production. I noticed after a short while that the filament I was using was too thick for the machine and it got stuck and cased a heap of problems. I switched the filament to another brand and continued printing with a lot better success (3d printing for production is not as fun as it sounds)
    However the new filament seems to react a bit differently to the cooling fan setup. The print looks great and the compression strength is excellent, but it seems like the layer adhesion is not as good. It’s not terrible, but it’s not optimal either.

    So to fix these two problems I redesigned the piece so that it has a lot more surface around the holes and I re-tweaked the machine to print for maximum strength instead of print finish. I now print without any fan and over-extrude slightly to really melt and fuse the layers together.

    I agree that the piece should be weak enough to break before the servo, but it should also be strong enough to not break before the zip ties. It’s a difficult line to walk, I hope I can make it… One problem is the nature of the 3D print technology I’m using. There is a point where the part simply cant become stronger than the layer adhesion.

    The new piece is much stronger, it weighs a couple of grams more (around 2 I believe) and it takes longer to print, but it’s worth it.

    Since this is definitely my shortcoming I’ll be offering a free top piece to everyone that have ordered a tilt mechanism or a tricopter kit. (Will post this on the front page soon)

    The piece still fits the bottom tilt piece and use the same screw.

    I’ll post more about the version 2 top piece tomorrow or the day after.

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 90 total)
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