The design of the drone was realized using Solidwork 2016. Several challenges were present and a list of requirements was needed.

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The requirement that were ask by the course:

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• Ideally have soft bumpers to ensure protection from shocks in the possibly violent streams of gases;

• have a hard core capable to resist standard mechanical stresses up to 120°C;

• be of low cost for possible regular replacement;

• have a simple design, for possible printing in less developed countries.

 

These requirements were taken into account during the design. However, this was not enough to properly define all the different constraints for the drone. Thus additional specification were added in order to design a functional drone.

It had to:

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• Be able to contain all the electronics and mechanical parts that were provided in order to work properly;

• To have 4 arms to hold the motors and the blades. The distance between the blades must be large enough to avoid collision;

• To have access to the micro usb port of the drone;

• To be able to connect the motor to the  electronic circuit;

• To provide space for a camera;

• To protect the electronics and different parts;

• To place the different components in order to have a balanced weight to maintain equilibrium of the drone;

• To minimize the weight.

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Due to the fact that no one in the group was familiar with a modeling program the design was made by successive trials and errors. Different changes in the design were made to adapt to the size of the components, or to change the dimensions and include tolerance. The 3D printer, even though being a rather precise tools, cannot make perfectly fitting parts. 

The challenge was to conceive the drone that could meet all those specification. The trickiest part was to imagine how everything could fit inside the drone while maintaining a small height to width ratio in order to keep the drone stable. What’s more, the battery was to be centered to balance the drone and the electrical had to remain accessible in case of problems.

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Due to a discussion about the bumpers, we thought that it was asked to have additional bumpers to protect the blades of the drone. The design was thus a bit modified to add those bumpers. The design is exactly the same as before, the only difference are the bumpers protecting the blades.

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​The printed version will be a bit smaller than the previous one, this is due to the fact the the dimensions at current scale exceed the printer’s capacity. Those dimensions were fixed by the component. If the components were a bit smaller (specially the electronic circuit) or if the printer was a bit bigger, there would be no problem.