Drones are everywhere in the air and are used for a variety of applications including delivery, in military missions, and of course for recreational purposes. Anyone can buy flying robots from a store, but the fun and satisfaction of building a quadcopter from scratch will disappear.
In the DIY culture, anyone with electronic and programming skills can be inspired and build quadcopters. For example, the Instructables project posted by Nolan5454 is one of the best DIY quadcopter that can be built at home. The flying robot described in the tutorial can carry two cameras, has a printed body and is flyable via GPS or FM transmitter.
The drone is centered on ArduPilot 2.6 open-source autopilot featured enough to control the motors and keep it safe in the air. All the parts of the quadcopter are located inside the plastic frame for safety measures, except the GPS and FM controller for signal reasons. Using plastic materials is the cheapest and best crash resistant way to build drones.
The frame was printed using Makerbot Replicator printer while the digital files were designed with Autodesk Inventor.
The drone has four long arms (21 centimeters) designed with trusses to create a strong and weight low structure. The motors are attached with screws for a simple reason – it could be easily removed.
To find how to build the quadcopter, components and resources, check the 3D Printed Quadcopter with Arduino project.