Micro Drone Frame

2025 reinvigorated my love for aviation when I took up an RC plane project from when I first started using SolidWorks in 2015. To gain a better understanding of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), I purchased a tiny whoop drone and practiced with that until I started breaking things.

This spurred the idea that I would use PA6-CF20 to print as many drone frames as I needed to improve my skills, while also wanting to gain a better understanding of the aerodynamics and flight characteristics of quadcopters and different frames. After a few iterations I landed on a design that allowed me to bolt all of the sensitive electronics to a single base plate, where the flight controller (FC) was mounted using TPU "rivets" to reduce vibration noise and impact forces translated through the frame. This base plate then has what I call the duct frame bolted to it. The duct frame acts as armor for the propellors and electronics while providing some thrust by reducing the cross-sectional area of the flow path of air across the propellors. Through some very rough test methods, I calculated roughly 12% increase in thrust from the ducts.

The two piece design allows pilots to swap out ducts with varying thicknesses to find the weight or durability they're looking for. I'm proud to say that one of the variants has roughly the same weight as comparable models on the market at ~38g AUW (BetaFPV's Meteor75 weighs 38.97g AUW).