We’re always on the look out for amazing DIY projects that relate to 3D printing. Just the other day a new tri-copter design was posted on Flitetest.com by rocketman1092 which really caught my eyes. Then moments later it also appeared on thingiverse, so naturally we had to start making this right away.

Material & Slicing

The choice of material was easy. We needed something that was tough and resistant to heat so we decided on our XT 3D printing filament. All parts were printed on a Makerbot Rep

licator 2, with buildTak build plate. The buildTak plate allows you to print XT (with almost nog warping) without a heated build platform. For small parts one must use a slicer profile with cooling, but for larger parts it’s better to disable cooling so parts won’t start warping.

Makerbot Replicator 2 slicer profiles for XT filament:

0.2mm layerheight – 230C – Fan On
0.2mm layerheight – 230C – Fan Off

The 3D printed parts showed excellent layer adhesion using these settings, so they should be able to take a beating. Printing all the parts took roughly 12-14 hours, therefore making spare parts shouldn’t take too long.

Ordering Parts

Next step is of course buying the parts that we need to make this thing fly. Our tri-copter will have the following set-up

Motors
Multistar 2206-2150KV

ESC
Afro ESC 12Amp SimonK Firmware

Control Board
Naze 32 Acro

Propellors
Gemfan 5030

Battery
Turnigy Nanotech 1000mah 3S 25-50C

Telemetry
Skyzone 5.8ghz 200mw AV Tx & Rx set
Circular polarized antenna RP-SMA

Camera
Mini DVR 808 #16 Lens D