Reducing weight

As told in my previous blogpost the weight of my new frame is currently the only negative factor. I bought some Carbon fiber plates to reduce weight.


-> Carbon Fiber Sheet 1.5mm*300mm*150mm

I just had to cut this sheet in half to get the exact size I needed to fit on my quad. The result looks really nice and it also feels strong.

I also threw away the aluminium battery holder underneath the quad and added a second carbon sheet on top to hold battery and electronics. This sheet is seperated by the same rubbers I use for my motormounts. I did this to hopefully reduce even more vibrations. But that is something I'll test later.

An other thing I did to reduce weight is by using just wires to connect my ecs to the battery. On my prevouis X-Frame I used the powerdistribution board I had created for my first + Frame equiped with arduino. But this board is currently not really needed. So in total I saved up to 130 grams (almost 10%). Current total weight 1270 grams.

Because of the bad weather. Just a little flight test in the garage to see if it still works.

vibration reducing motor mount

Here it is. My homemade motor mount. It's easy to build, it's cheap and it has a good result on reducing motor vibrations. The only disatvantage is that motor temperature is a bit higher. If you mount the motors directly on to the aly frame the heat will flow in to the frame causing the motor to be cooler. In this case the motor mount blocks this temperature flow so to motors run warmer.

1) Take some material that you think will be strong enough to hold your motors and make some little plates (in pair). Size: a bit larger then your motor :)

2) 1 one plate you drill the holes you need to mount the motor and rubbers. On the other plate you drill the holes you need to mount this plate to you quadcopter frame and rubbers. In my case I use 6 rubber to hold 1 motor.

3) When pushing the rubbers in to the holes and attach the 2 plates. You will see that there will be no contact from motor to frame. It's that simple. If you have a smaller multicopter with less thrust you can use 4 rubbers. If you have a lager multicopter with more thrust just add some rubbers.



The rubbers I used for this motor mount are in fact computer case fan mounting rubbers. They are really cheap as you can see -> Case Fan Rubbers
I noticed that there exist professionel RC motor mount rubbers. But these are more expensive and hard to get. Maybe they give an even result. But as I said, my setup is really easy to build and it's very cheap.