FDM 3D Printed Gimbal Parts

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I sent a couple of the parts off to be 3D printed using Fused Deposition Modeling ABS plastic. Those parts arrived yesterday and I've begin test fitting as many parts as I can. So far everything seems to fit. There are a couple G10 pieces I need to have cut to complete the gimbal.

Bulkhead with gimbal roll motor fitted:

Hobby King 2-axis Alexmos micro gimbal controller mounted to bulkhead:

These parts I called the gimbal bowtie ears, once the G10 part is made it will make more sense why I called them bowtie ears (the G10 part which connects it all is shaped like a bowtie):

GoPro mount, gimbal pitch motor, and IMU assembled:

IMU wiring is routed through the GoPro mount and through the gimbal motor shaft:

Not installed yet is the Lumenier GoPro connector, this will be the same as my other mini-quad:

Trying out the Tau Labs Sparky flight controller for this build:

I decided to try out the Tau Labs Sparky on this build because it has some pretty cool features which are supported. Right off the bench this thing already has a barometer and magnetometer built in, so it supports altitude hold flight mode. It also has the capability to do GPS position hold and Return to Home failsafe with the addition of a GPS antenna, which are features I will be interested in possibly adding down the line.

I have put on order most of the piece parts I will need to finish this build, and the G10 should be arriving to Twitchity soon (who will be cutting the new pieces). Hopefully the updates will keep rolling and if things go well, first prototype flights will happen before the Thanksgiving holiday.

More Progress on the Gimbal Mini-Quad

Slowly making more progress on the Gimbal Mini-Quad. Learning quite a bit about Inventor Fusion 360, but I still prefer SolidWorks.

Work Progressing on Gimbal

As I alluded to earlier I am in the midst of designing another new project mini-quad which revolves around the incorporation of a gimbal. I'm slowly muddling my way through Autodesk Inventor Fusion 360. Below is a preview of the gimbal parts being assembled in Inventor Fusion.

All the yellow parts are going to be 3D printed. I have a set on order through Shapeways that are going to be SLS (selective laser sintered) nylon, but they won't arrive until the end of November due to production delays. I also have a set being printed by another company but had them done in FDM (fused deposition modeling) ABS plastic so that I can still move forward with form/fit/function testing.

Titan Tricopter vs Slash

Just a little video a friend and I made after work one day.

This was filmed using my Titan Tricopter with custom fitted brushless GoPro gimbal.

Snorkeling in the Devil's Den

Besides "snorkeling" in the pool as a kid, I had never really been anywhere snorkeling as a serious activity. Several weeks ago, Michael found this place in Williston FL , which is near Ocala. It is called the Devil's Den because it is a sink hole cavern, and an underground spring which gives of steam in the cooler months. Well anyways, the video says a lot more than what I could put into words:


It was really cool, and now that we have snorkel gear I'm sure we'll find some other cool places to visit.

Version 2 Final Assembly

My last entry addressed the steps taken to wire up the new KISS 18A ESC's. It actually took me a while to complete wiring the other 3 motors and ESC's. But that was only the beginning. The KISS ESC's do not include a BEC circuit to power the Naze32 or the receiver, so you have to include your own. Below are the final assembly steps of the assembly of the 4S powered Version 2 Mini-Quad.

Lots of wiring here, designing a power distribution board is on my list of things to do:

Placement of Pololu 5V 500mA regulator:

Dirty section assembled, one connector for the ESC/Naze32, and one to power the Immersion vtx:

Originally changed the bottom plate on Version 2 for better cooling of the ESC's when mounted inboard, but I ended up mounting the KISS 18A ESC's to the arms since they didn't have heat sinks. Here you can see the rats nest worth of wiring it takes to get everything connected:

Mounting the lower clean plate with new black Naze32 mounted:

The install is a lot cleaner with the connector on the bottom, and the board clocked with the USB port facing out. This will make it easier to program too: 

Detail view of how I mounted the Immersion vtx, which I don't think I showed in my previous build:

Version 2 upper clean plate changed to allow for access to a velcro battery strap:

The antenna mast mount from Shapeways finally arrived:

Receiver mounted:

My pictures really don't do the orange Shapeways printed parts justice:

Once more picture of the backend:

Other than a lack of PDB I am pretty satisfied with the finished Version 2 Mini-Quad. Eventually I would like to take some time to redesign the upper dirty plate as a PDB, but in the mean time I have other projects to work on and flight tuning of the new 4S setup.

I went ahead and took it out for it's maiden hover and it is an absolute rocket even with the 6030 props. It wa suggested I run the 6045 props because the setup should handle it, but I might tool around with these props for a little while.

AutoDesk Inventor Fusion 360

So for a couple months now I had been tinkering with Inventor Fusion for Mac after finding out it was free on the Apple App Store. What I didn't realize at the time is that there were two versions of the program available. I was actually starting to get frustrated because I would look for tutorials on youtube and I kept noticing that the user interface was different between what I was seeing and the videos (both of which running on Mac OSX mind you). This made it hard to follow along, and in some cases I couldn't find features or menus that were shown in some tutorials at all.

After struggling for a couple months, I was starting to think Fusion was nothing more than Autodesk's stab at making a Google Sketchup competitor: it just didn't seem like a good engineering design tool.

Somehow, and I cannot recall why, I was on the Autodesk site looking for info, and I noticed they were offering a free 30 day trial of Inventor Fusion 360, which is apparently a paid cloud app different from the standard free version of Fusion for Mac. So I decided to look through the features and see if there was anything worthwhile that would make a paid subscription worth it (just as a last ditch effort). Well it turns out after more digging, that if you are a student/teacher you can get a free 3 year license, and if you are a startup company you can get a free 1 year license!

So I decided to download the free trial and register myself as a free startup 1 yr license. Surprisingly, you don't need to provide any documentation that proves this, but there is a licensing agreement that you must agree to. I read through it, and it pretty much just states that when your license runs out, you need to subscribe to the cloud app if you plan to make profit from your designs. That shouldn't be a problem for me since my design work has been strictly personal projects.

So first project in Inventor Fusion 360: modeling the Fat Shark 600TVL CMOS camera for my next quad project. 

Inventor Fusion 360 is much more engineering centered than the standard version. The sketches are parametrically linked to the features, which I don't understand why they weren't in the standard version. It was very frustrating when you went back to an old sketch and tried to change a dim, only to realize the sketch no longer drove the feature. In 360 there is a time line at the bottom which is kind of like a feature tree and you can right click and edit what you have done much easier. I like this much better, although it is still archaic when compared to the feature tree in Solidworks or even ProE Wildfire.

I am sure with a little practice I will become much more proficient with Fusion 360 and things will start to make sense. Not sure I will ever like it as much as I like Solidworks just because I have so many hours on it and I have perfected my hotkey setup. However it is hard to argue with having a decent engineering tool which is free and so far does most of what you need.