This Drone is Made of 3D Printed Carbon Fiber!! 

Yes you are correct. I designed my own 5" frame, fully 3D printed and it fly's just fine without any special tune. The most important thing is to have 2 "arms " for every arm if you understand. Also it is truly symmetrical X, everything is stacked ontop

@@uzer12387 my drone is printed out of simple PLA

@@uzer12387 are you on about using carbon fibre, as in sheets or are you on about using carbon fibre filled filament?

@@David-ty6my it's great that it works printed out of PLA but PLA isn't exactly known for it's mechanical properties, it is known to be relatively weak and brittle. You could probably reduce weight and get a stiffer and more impact resistant frame if you used better materials like carbon fibre filled nylons, they are lighter than PLA by volume, they can be stiffer and they tend to be stronger and more impact resistant.

@@David-ty6my What do you mean with "2 arms for every arm"? I also fly a 3D printed frame (PLA+). Also true X with the FC+Vista stacked on top of eachother. Only 2.5" though.

lol

Lmao 🤣

Isn’t LW-PLA significantly weaker after foaming though?

@@conorstewart2214 Definitely but PLA will snap from a hit anyway so Why not print it in 40% of the mass? :)

Came here to say this.

Yea jawdropping

i would think with micros you would run into weight being an issue. to get the stiffness you might have to go thick. I might work tho.

Sadly the markforged printers are so expensive in comparison to a traditional fdm printer

Yeah frames like this aren’t good for 3D printing, as for designing frames for 3D printing, most prints are hollow anyway and the empty space is filled with infill and you can choose the infill pattern and density so that could take care of the hollow and internal bracing you mentioned and since infill is all handled by the slicer you don’t need to design any of it in yourself, just make the arm a solid object and set the slicer settings.

Then if you wear out the motor protection you have to replace the arm too. Having flexible/soft TPU sections on parts would maybe be a good idea or maybe even an exoskeleton.

The Bambu lab high temperature, carbon fibre reinforced filaments (PAHT-CF, PA6-CF and PET-CF) are like £70 - 90 per kilogram so it all depends on the weight of the arm. There are much cheaper materials though but they will have different properties. If a frame was properly designed for 3D printing then it should work with polycarbonate or other such filaments which are cheaper.

It is not a good idea to 3D print frames designed for getting cut out of a carbon fibre sheet. A carbon fibre sheet and a printed part have very different mechanical properties. You should take proper advantage of 3D printing and design a frame to play into 3D printings strengths. A properly designed and optimised 3D printed frame would perform much better than just printing out a carbon fibre sheet frame.

Yeah the sheet based designs are optimised for cost mainly and are really just 2D designs with some thickness. With 3D printing you don’t have any of the same limitations so you should take advantage of the ability to make complex shapes and it absolutely would compensate for the material itself being weaker. You don’t even need it to be a generative design, for the most part they aren’t that useful, they just look cool. Also a lot of generative designs are based on simulations and you can’t accurately simulate 3D printed parts.

It has to be easy to replace too. A 3d design would have more attachment points.

Lol

PC is generally very impact resistant but polycarbonate is a class of materials, there is a lot of variation within it, so not all polycarbonates are the most impact resistant. Looking at Bambu lab PC it is far from their most impact resistant filaments and it isn’t that stiff either. Yeah printing out designs that are optimised for being cut out of a carbon fibre sheet won’t get great results, they need to get someone to properly design a frame taking advantage of the capabilities of 3D printing, it would perform much better.

@@conorstewart2214 yeah, you are right there. I hadn't looked at Bambu filaments specifically, though good on them for having such comprehensive datasheets. Surprised by the Bambu filaments impact strengths to be honest. Guess their PC is some kind of blend to be printing at sub 300C temperatures? Is it also a bit surprising that their CF filaments have higher impact strengths than the non-CF. I thought conventional wisdom is that with chopped CF you are trading stiffness with brittleness. I had modded my Prusa to print PC at >330C, and was getting great results, but my favourite PC filament manufacturer (rigid.ink) stopped making filament, and I did certainly notice that other brands weren't as good. Thinking of trying ABS next as due to its lower density have an extra 20% of volume to play with for the same weight.

@@kevinbernitz6580 where are you seeing that their CF filaments have higher impact strength? You can only really compare them with the same base material and their PLA-CF has less impact strength than their PLA and their PETG-CF has less impact strength than their PETG. The PA filaments have high impact strength because the base nylon does. I have printed other brands of PC below 300 C before and they do print but I do agree that bambu have done something to make it print better at the cost of lower mechanical properties. According to their MSDS, it is 99 % polycarbonate with only 1 % additives by weight.

@@conorstewart2214 you are right - I obviously got myself confused. Comparing their PETG to PETG-CF it's showing the correct pattern of CF being lower impact resistance. Something else that I find interesting (that maybe I'm getting wrong again) is their TDS shows their PETG is one of their most impact resistant materials.. I've not yet used their PETG, but my previous experience with PETG showed it to be really brittle, pretty much shattering on impacts.

That actually sounds like a smart idea, will have to try that -Bubby

Before trying that it is probably worth designing a frame to take advantage of a 3D printers capabilities rather than printing a flat object.

Soon. ;)

The only carbon fibre filaments that Bambu say aren’t compatible with the AMS is the PA6-CF and PET-CF and that is due to the brittleness of the filament. The PET-CF isn’t really stronger and is actually less suitable for drones, it has much lower impact resistance but is very stiff. The best option is probably the PAHT-CF, it has the highest impact resistance and good strength and doesn’t absorb much water. The PA6-CF is best in terms of mechanical properties other than impact resistance and the fact that it absorbs a lot of moisture very quickly and it’s mechanical properties drop massively so it’s only good if you can stop it from absorbing moisture.

Beer in mind this was just 3D printing a design meant to be cut out of a carbon fibre plate. A properly designed frame for 3D printing would do better.

PAHT-CF has a bending modulus of 4230 MPa, for dry PA6-CF it is 5460 MPa, and for PETG-CF it is only 2910 MPa, so it is actually significantly less stiff. PETG is known for being pretty flexible. Maybe you meant PET-CF which has a bending modulus of 5320 MPa so it is stiff but it’s impact strength is pretty low.

It would be better to design a frame meant for 3D printing rather than trying to print a frame meant for getting cut out of a carbon fibre sheet. Normal carbon fibre frame designs are not good designs for 3D printing.

@@conorstewart2214 i said oblivion style, it was injection molded... I tried making one but it kept breaking easily. I currently use a frame called the toad that says no stress across the front, that is tpu, of course I've modified it with a extra carbon fiber plate in the bottom to reinforce it due to the weight of the battery, i used a soldering iron to oush aluminum standoffs i cut to length down threw to mount the top and bottom plates i make in petg, they lock the frame together to make it more rigid and I use a whoop canopy on the top for the camer so i don't have to look at the front part if the frame. I also used washers under the motor mounting screws so they don't pull through. The frame flys wonderfully, so smooth being most the structure is tpu, but im not running super powerful motors, some old red bottoms on 35a escs. The biggest issue I've found is the battery on the bottom is easy to knock off and destroy hanging from the bottom...i used a old bike inner tube to help protect the batteries, but i still I need to modify it for 2 battery straps yet

Or you could just design a frame that is meant for 3D printing, rather than trying to print a frame meant for being cut out of a flat carbon fibre sheet.

If the frame was designed for 3D printing then maybe cheaper materials could be used.

For drones you want the arms to be stiff.

So it’s not good or durable enough just because you said so? Did you just take a carbon fibre frame design and print it? If so then that is your problem, most drone designs are meant for being cut out of a carbon fibre sheet and therefore and optimised for that. If you want to get good results with 3D printed frames you need to create a frame that is optimised for 3D printing.

That sounds like mistakes on your part. First of all you should not have been trying to use normal PLA for a drone arm, amongst all the other issues it goes soft at 50-60 C, which means your motors could have melted it. Secondly, your drone shooting up in the air at 0 % throttle would not be due to the arm being printed at all. Most likely you damaged something in the crash that led to you replacing the arm.

That is a vastly oversimplified and just untrue statement. There are a lot of variations of PLA and PLA-CF but in the case of Bambu labs the PLA-CF is stiffer and stronger but has less impact resistance.

It's not a looks thing, nylon is inherently flexible so the carbon stiffens it. Same with glass filled nylon. Unfortunately this takes away to the validity of your claim

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Adding carbon fibre or other additives (glass fibre, glass microspheres, ceramic microspheres, etc) does change the structural properties of the plastic, pretty significantly in some cases, mainly by improving stiffness. 3D printing frames is still a great idea, but only when the frame is designed for 3D printing. Most people these guys included, just take a frame designed for cutting out of carbon fibre sheets and print it. The frames are optimised for carbon fibre sheets not 3D printing, if the frame was designed and optimised for 3D printing and the material used it would work much better.