Hey, it's Andi again from Sintratec and today
I'd like to show you my latest project:
This FPV racing drone.
The first design phase took me around 8 hours.
The idea was to create a fully functional drone
with its entire frame 3D printed...
using only selective laser sintering.
Once I was happy with the result, I printed
the 7 components using durable PA12 nylon powder
on our Sintratec S2 system.
A big advantage of 3D printing is,
that you can create structures...
that are either not feasible or extremely
expensive to produce with conventional methods.
Due to the enormous flexibility of SLS, geometries can
be perfectly matched to the application
to meet the demands of stability, efficiency and design.
I was so proud of how pretty the drone came out,
that I thought it deserved a nice finish.
So, I sandblasted all parts and then
coated them with a black acrylic paint,
which has a great adhesion due to the
still lightly structured surface,
that is typical for SLS.
Once assembled, I attempt the first test flight in my living room
and of course crashed into a wall soon enough.
The antenna for the video transmission
instantly broke off
and because it was tightly fixed
also damaged the fuselage.
To avoid this from happening in future crashes,
I came up with the idea
to attach the antenna to the frame
with a flexible adapter piece.
This part I 3D printed with our soft TPE material...
and after slight modifications,
everything fit perfectly.
Now the antenna can bend off
without damaging the fuselage.
With all the arms, cover, fuselage
and electrical components prepared...
I started assembling the drone,
which took me around one hour.
First, I inserted the brass press-in nuts into fuselage.
I melted them down with a soldering iron
to ensure I get robust, long lasting threads.
Then I screwed the arms together with the
brushless motors and attached them to the fuselage.
Next I soldered the cables to the ESC's and mounted
the video transmitter to the back of the fuselage.
The F4 flight-controller then was
also mounted on top of the ESC's.
Once all the wiring was done, and the baseplate
for holding the battery was mounted...
I attached the rotor blades.
These are from an RC store
 and not 3D printed...for now.
And finally I put on the cover. Job done.
So, with the electric parts working
I think we are now ready to see
if this drone can fly properly.
And if so, how it competes
to store bought racing drones.
Stay tuned for the results in our
follow-up video.
