Basic Quadcopter Tutorial - Chapter 2 - Frame Construction Video Lecture

so okay these are the basic parts of
dr. Frayn
artist parts when you're first building
one of these unless you go out and buy a
premade frame is finding all of the
materials that you're going to need to
build the frame this is just square
stock aluminum and I've already drilled
some holes in it and measured it out but
essentially my frame consists of one bar
that's 28 inches long that's so I can
come in a little bit for the motors so
the motors are about 25 inches from the
shaft to the other shaft and that's a
pretty typical size now I've chosen this
square aluminum because it's very easy
to mount things flat and square and
you're gonna find as you build your
quadcopter that keeping things square is
very important to the performance of the
final craft so a square makes it really
easy now if you don't have stock
aluminum if you can't go out and buy it
you can use something like a towel rod
it's not that much heavier it won't be
aluminum but it'll be square and you can
typically find them at a hardware store
we're lucky in Orlando we have a couple
of surplus stores and that's where I go
to find all my parts it's a place called
sky craft but they have all kinds of
stuff you got to dig through some bins
but you can find some things that you
can't find anywhere else so I've got
this these raw pieces of aluminum now
you notice that there is this black
material here this is a very thin piece
of foam rubber and I buy this in squares
once again at that surplus store and the
reason for the the rubber is to try to
dampen some of the vibration and quiet
the frame down when I when I talk about
quieting it down what I mean is to
reduce the overall vibrations vibrations
in a gyroscope accelerometer based
flight controller are very very critical
to the performance so you want to make
sure you dampen that however you can now
there's lots of different ways of doing
this there's some great ideas on the
forums people use or ings people don't
use anything and they still get good
performance but I'm trying these thin
thin foam rubber and when I put the
frame together I'm not going to crank
down too hard on the screws and that'll
give me a little bit of a vibration
dampening in the boom itself so these
are adhesive back that I've put it on
here I've already drilled my holes so
that's one member now obviously I've got
to keep these on the same plane right so
I've got to cut these so I've got a
space in the middle if I've got enough
screws in my mounting plate it's not
going to take away from the overall
strength but I want to make sure that
I've got equal lengths here so I've
never Devery thing else so that at the
end of the boom I get the right space
here in the middle and we're good to go
now these are just athens inch aluminum
i got stock i got a sheet of it for
about I think was three or four dollars
I've drilled all the holes some of these
are for weight savings but not really
they're going to be mostly for passing
wires from one part one side of the
plate to the other side of the plate
you're gonna have a lot of wires on your
quadcopter so you know and make sure you
have those kinds of holes so you can
make it really easy to pass the wires
through so I've got this is actually my
top plate and then I've got my bottom
plate and it's a little bit different
configuration in terms of the holes I
don't need as much pass-through and from
the bottom the mounting holes all and
that's these four and the four on the
corner
I basically clamped these together in
drill those holes so I knew they were in
the same place when I did that I also
marked the sides because unless you're
working with a drill press in a machine
shop very difficult to get things
perfect right so I've marked the corners
here so I knew as I build it these are
always lined up like that okay so before
I start putting the the booms together
I'm going to
my top plate and I've got these
standoffs now these are just nylon
screws with some nylon standoffs and
some plastic nuts I'm going to use these
to mount my hoverfly Pro on top of my
top mounting plate like this and these
standoffs will do a couple things
they'll get it off the conductive
aluminum plate and they'll meet very
nicely with these vibration grommets
that are in the mounting holes and this
will help to reduce some of the
vibration that's translated into the
board right you don't have to use nylon
you just have to make sure that if you
use a conductive screw that it's not
connecting any of the electronics on the
hoverfly probe to the rest of your
structure so I use nylon just to be safe
so we'll put these in you have to decide
when you're building this what
configuration you're going to use and by
configuration I mean either plus or X
configuration for your quad now that
will determine how you're going to mount
your board if you're going to be in Plus
configuration then we want to align the
hoverfly pro with the booms right so
that's what I've chosen for this quad
it's the most basic configuration so
that's how I've mounted or drilled my
mounting holes when you're making a
plate like this might be a good idea to
go ahead and add some X mounting holes
so if you want to switch later on you
won't have to disassemble your whole
quad
now I'm gonna be using a lot of tools I
don't want to put the hoverfly pearl on
yet I'm gonna wait till the very last
step and add that I am going to take
these mounting nuts and just put them on
the ends of the screws here so I don't
lose them now the other thing I'm going
to do in preparation before I put the
two booms
together is I'm going to mount the
landing gear onto the bottom plate I'm
not using nuts I've basically chosen a
6:32 screw and the holes that were
already in the landing gear were just
small enough that they'll self thread
now that's kind of cheating a little bit
but if you wanted to add nuts you can
sometimes I like plastic parts to be
able to break away if they want to so
there's my mounting bottom mounting
plate with my landing gear and also be
pretty good you'll see there's another
battery tray I'm going to add to this
after I do that yet
I'm checking the markings that I had on
my plate to make sure I line everything
up right
whatever you put metal parts together
you don't want to tighten one screw and
then put the next one in wait till
you're all done and then use a pattern
as you tighten you don't want to create
undue stresses on the metal parts right
now I'm just getting the nut on there I
use nylock nuts because parts that I
don't want to take apart all the time I
don't like to use Loctite so I use my
locks and they seem to be hold up pretty
well so I've got the cross boom this is
very loose I'm going to tighten that up
just a little bit
one thing I did was the holes on the
mounting plates are just the right size
for the screws but the holes in the
crossbars are much bigger and the idea
there is I've got my foam rubber but if
at all possible I'd like the screws from
the mounting plates to not touch the
cross members and that would couple the
vibration into the plates now the truth
is that I can't get it perfect but at
least that's the idea I remember I've
got foam rubber in there so I didn't
crank those screws down before I tighten
the side the two side beams got a square
here I'm going to just make sure things
are square we have to be absolutely
perfect no would it be great if it was
absolutely perfect yeah definitely it
helps the performance the hoverfly probe
flight controller assumes that it's
perfect I mean I have to do it's based
on math but the closer we can get it the
better will be but you'll never get it
perfect not unless everything is
machined and produced for you which in a
frame like this it's not going to be now
I'm gonna flip it over and make sure
that all of my screws have about the
same amount of thread showing and it
looks like it's pretty close this one's
a little tight
that looks pretty good and that's our
frame