Great first post and project. Thanks for sharing! Thanks for the Videos!
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Welcome to the forum! Love the Hexacopter design and the detailed write-up sharing how you experimented your way to your final design. Of course, I couldn’t stop there, so I cheered and sighed my way through the Portland reflector story. Since, I’ve had a career in product management, marketing, branding…I have great sympathy for your struggles there but also found your tenacity admirable.
Eager to see what you create!
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Seems like forever ago, but I built a multiwiicopter Y6 from scratch. This makes me happy to see that you created your own drone from start to finish, and show that it flies. Congrats on a super rad project. I really like how all your internal wiring and components are sandwiched together by this design. Nice!!!
(Side note: My new DJI Mavic Pro 2 is showing up in a couple of days, so I will be flying this weekend for sure.)
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Incredible work! Thank you for the video and file!
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Amazing project!
So much time and effort to figure all of this out and get it to fly.
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Impressive specs on that little bird. 
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This is the most up my alley project to date! I’m not a mutirotor pilot yet but the snap together airframe is truly inspirational.
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Awesome project! 
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You win the Internet today 
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Wonderful post. Thank you for the info
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Nailed it! This is a spectacular project, and your website showcases plenty more. Can’t wait to see what’s next.
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Thanks! It was unfortunate how the Portland Reflector story ended, but at least that gives me more time to work on projects like this one!
I wish I had spent a little more time thinking about the wiring, they rarely get hit by a blade, haha. I think I have enough tie down points that shouldn’t be an issue anymore.
No nails holding it together, only snap fits ;). Up next will most likely be a hovercraft. I’ve started looking into how I will design the skirt to be laser cut. Probably won’t really get going on this one until the rain and darkness returns to Seattle though!
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Incredible design! Have you found the acrylic to be at all brittle for those snap-together parts where they are expected to flex a bit? I’ve only done smaller versions and had enough breaks where I felt I might need a new approach, but maybe in larger sizes they are less prone.
Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks! Acrylic wouldn’t work for this design, these parts are all acetal. To make acrylic work you would need to lengthen the height of the snaps or decrease the snap engagement, either way making it not have to bend as sharply.
Acetal? I assume there’s no proofgrade Acetal, but can you share some sources? I just tried a design in acrylic with just a similar snap-in part without the quick release, and it worked well, once I extended it a bit and yes, made the snap gap pretty small (1mm on each side). Thanks!
Acetal (chemical name) is also known as Delrin (brand name), that will make your searches much easier.
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Last time I checked there wasn’t a Proofgrade option. It’s also called polyoxymethylene, POM, and polyacetal. I use McMaster for most of my materials.
These are the black and white sheets I used:
Not sure how much laser power variation there is, but I used full power on both, speed of 150 for cutting black, and 145 for cutting white. Sometimes the material I ordered was a little warped so I used magnets to hold the sheets flat. Definitely use those at your own risk, I manually moved the laser head over the magnets holding the sheets down before I ran it, to make sure the magnets would be more attracted to the crumb tray and not the moving parts.
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I have found that ePlastics is less expensive, but this may change. I buy a lot of Delrin for my multitools.
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Nice! Yeah definitely cheaper than McMaster, and they have blue. I was hoping there would be more color options but I haven’t found any.
Another thing that I’ve grown to like about the ePlastics Delrin is that it is flat and has a smooth surface. I bought some from Midland Plastics and it was warped and had saw mark swirls in it (which surprised me).
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