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Building the Magpie DS3 Drone
3D Print the Drone Air Frame
The DS3 variant of our Magpie air frame is a simple 220 mm Quad. The prototype drone airframe was the Martian II as described in Part 1 of this series.
The Martian II is constructed of carbon fibre, which is strong, less flexible but heavier than the PLA that we are using to 3D print our design. For example the arms, bottom deck and power distribution board mount weighs 81g in carbon fibre compared with the PLA equivalents which are 42g. Our components are a similar thickness to the Martian II bits except the flight deck, which is 1mm thicker.
Apart from the cost, availability and difficulty of 3D printing carbon fibre there is also a safety issue with this material. If a carbon fibre air frame crashes and breaks, you need a special clean up kit. Breathing in carbon fibre is not good for you. It is classified as an acute toxic substance and its effects can be similar to glass fibre or asbestos. It can also be very sharp and small particles will irritate the skin.
The design was put together in SketchUp, exported as an STL file and then turned into GCode instructions (which the 3D printer understands) using FlashPrint. FlashPrint actually converts the STL file to a GX file. A .gx file is a GCode file with an additional binary header that contains a thumbnail preview picture. FlashPrint is the slicing software used for the FlashForge Guider II 3D Printer. Whatever slicing software that you use should work with the STL files that you can download from Thingiverse.
The complete Bill of Materials (BOM) for the Magpie DS3 Drone is provided in Figure 2.
Start off by 3D printing the 4 arms (note that the arms come in left and right orientations and you need two of each) and the bottom deck. We have used black and white PLA filament in keeping with our Magpie theme. As shown in…
