We are very prod to release a new version of our drone to reforest: version 6. This would be our second Beta version, after the previous one where we won the Instructionables award.
After the pilot tests and several months with dozens of messages between Salva Serrano, the designer architect of our drone Weiwei Cheng, the Aerospace Engineer in charge of the pilot tests and Lot Amorós, who led the project- we designed what would be the new version of our drone, and – we hope – stable version of the platform, before we get into further improvements, such as a folding arm system.
Broadly speaking, as we detail in our drone version repository, these would be the improvements built into this release:
- Improved motor mount strength.
- Fixed the numbering of the arms.
- Added hole to place safety switch.
- Designed new seed bottle clamping system.
- Updated logos for faster engraving.
- Switched to a new PDB.
- Improved landing gear, much more resilient and now it’s modular!
- Reduced cut bed, a much smaller laser cutter is now needed to be manufactured.
- Added an engraving with the scale. This helps manufacturers know that they are going to cut the design to the correct dimensions.
- For better ESC protection, they are now inside the arms.
- Changed the position of GPS and Telemetry, they are now located near the flight board, so fewer cables are needed.
Some of the improvements:
Motor Mount:
Now the motors have a double-sheet mount, this makes it much more resistant to force vectors in different directions. In our tests we found that due to torque, the material could work in unexpected directions and not withstand the expected force, so we added a double sheet in this part, just as we did years ago with our drone flone.
Seed bottle fastening:
The system to hold the seed bottle we hadn’t boarded yet. Until now we had fastened it with temporary solutions, such as a tape, but to ensure the safety of sowing operations, it was necessary to standardize the clamping method, so we proposed this system that has fixed tapes and elastics that ensure that the bottle is centered and fastened, thanks to small pieces that we have designed that work as fastening buckles.
Landing gear
The new landing gear has been completely designed. What seemed like a trivial reinforcement has ended up bringing interesting improvements to the design. In addition to having resolved a possible weak spot at the lower end of the leg, we can now independently regulate the height of the drone, depending on the seed dispenser we are going to place. This has also reduced the material we need to manufacture the drone, as more parts now fit on the same surface.
Reduced cut bed
A much smaller laser cutter is now required to manufacture the drone. This is very important, as it allows smaller manufacturers or in more remote areas, to be able to manufacture the aircraft without the need for a large industrial cutter. Specifically it has been reduced to 10 sheets of 600×400 mm.
Added engraving with scale
In the world of laser cutting, we have come across a variety of machines, tools and operators, where for different reasons, the technicians did not fully understand what the actual size of the parts was. For this reason, to make the task easier for the operators of the laser cutter, we have added a 10 cm engraving to mark what is the actual size of the parts.
Protected ESCs
In the event of a possible accident, changing the structure of an arm is a fast and economical operation that can be carried out without major inconveniences, without interrupt the planting operations, reaching maximum operability. Changing an ESC, on the other hand, in addition to being expensive, can incur large delays of the operation, with this objective we place the ESC inside the arm, so that it is perfectly protected and is cooled under the propellers. For this we have redesigned the end of the arm to allow to be able to insert the ESC inside.
Improved element distribution
To reduce the length of the cables, we have placed the electronics as close as possible to each other.
Support us!
We were able to cut this version for an inexpensive price thanks to Domingo de Juegos! And it has been financed thanks to Dirk’s monthly contributions on our page in Patreon! If you wish, you can also make a contribution in a timely manner.
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