Summer 2013: Assembly of Practice Quadcopter
Return to Summer 2013 home page
The practice quadcopter design was taken from http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/23216-triq-450-concept-fpv-frame/. The design was modified to have #4-40 hardware standoffs, and the arms were extended so the distance between circularly adjacent propellers was 13.94" and 13.05" to support clearance for 10" propellers (rather than the 9" propellers in the design).
The frame was constructed using a single sheet of 12"x24"x1/16" G10/FR4 fiberglass. The gantry router in Dan's machine shop was used to cut the fiberglass. The speeds and feed rates used when generating the G-code to make all cuts are listed at the bottom of this page.
These values were set in Mastercam X6 while generating G-code for the gantry router. The tool names were automatically generated by Mastercam. Although three passes were used to completely mill out the outline, a total of two passes for all cuts could have been used. No cutting bits were broken, and neither tool suffered noticeable wear.
1/8 DRILL
The tool used for drilling all the #4-40 clearance holes was actually a #30 HSS drill bit, but setting the tool diameter to 1/8" in Mastercam was a close approximation.
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
| Feed rate | 12.224 |
| Spindle speed | 6112 |
| FPT | 0.001 |
| SFM | 200.0 |
| Plunge rate | 100.0 |
| Retract rate | 100.0 |
1/16 STRAIGHT BIT
The tool used for plunging and milling outlines was a 1/16" solid carbide burr cutter, as discussed here.
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
| Feed rate | 24.448 |
| Spindle speed | 12224 |
| FPT | 0.001 |
| SFM | 200.0 |
| Plunge rate | 12.0 |
| Retract rate | 50.0 |