Oh Drones. Nothing brings together so many favourite maker items and tools as your homemade UAV’s. Even when they come fully assembled like the 3DR IRIS, 3D printing can come in handy for useful customizations as in this LED and 3D Printed Prop Guards project from the Adafruit learning platform.
If you are not (yet) a drone pilot or enthusiast, IRIS is a $750 fully assembled personal UAV quadcopter with a GoPro compatible camera mount. It runs the Pixhawk Autopilot System, from the PX4 open-hardware project, which makes it easier to control and thus more accessible to newbies.
Having more control, and having long legs that make landings easier does not mean your copter props do not need protecting. Since 3D Robotics did not consider adding them in, you have a great excuse to visit Thingiverse, download the models and go back to your – or your local Fab Lab’s/ 3D Hub’s – 3D printer (which is exactly what you were waiting to hear, right?).
To make the guards, adafruit suggests using the T-Glaze PET filament from Kai Parthy (a type of coloured PET filament that you can easily find from your favourite filament supplier). Adafruit gives you exact instruction on temperatures and use: but pertinent to say you will need a minimum print volume of 250mm x 150mm x 100 mm.
The NeoPixel LED rings will probably be just as much fun to configure but this is a 3D printing website so we will let you visit adafruit to find out all about that and the instructions to set up the Arduino IDE. Just know that the final result should look something like this
Source: Adafruit
