Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#1

Post by tsungxu » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 8:47 PM UTC

I made this 130 mile capable VTOL drone in only 90 days. It can fly for 3 hours on a single charge. That would make it one of the longest range and endurance 3D printed VTOLs in the world.

This is the thing I'm most proud of building to date!

Before this project, I was a total CAD, 3D printing and aerodynamic modeling beginner. I had only built and flown one VTOL before.

SPECS

Wingspan: 3.9 ft (1200 mm) Length: 2.5 ft (770 mm) Weight: 5.6 lb (2.55kg)

Airframe: foaming PLA (Bambu PLA-Aero) and PETG structural parts printed on A1 printer, CFRP booms and spars

Battery: Li-ion silicon anode Amprius SA08 cells, 6s2p pack by Upgrade Energy Motors: 2807 AOS for lift and cruise (unoptimized) Lifting ESCs: 4 in 1 Holybro Tekko32 F4 45A Cruise ESC: Flycolor Raptor 5 45A Lifting and cruise props: 7042 Gemfan (unoptimized)

Flight controller: Speedybee F405 Wing GPS: M10

Firmware: Ardupilot 4.6.0

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This video edit ended up shorter than I planned. Being my first Youtube video with significant post production effort, I underestimated the work required to make a longer in-depth video with voiceover, edited footage, etc.

Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone
tsungxu.com

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#2

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 8:47 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#3

Post by truetraveller » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

Top speed?

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#4

Post by bufferoverflow » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

It's an impressive achievement for an amateur.

He has separate motors for vertical and horizontal flights, which simplifies the design, but creates a rather bad inefficiency, the vertical motors create lots of drag during the horizontal flight.

Maybe it's not a big deal, I'm not sure. Making motors rotate would add weight for sure, thus reducing the range.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#5

Post by georgel » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

Very awesome! Have you tried to see how much payload it could hold in addition to the drone's own weight?

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#6

Post by asadm » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

Pretty impressive! what's the BOM here. That battery seems expensive (most expensive part?)

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#7

Post by tsungxu » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

asadm wrote: post #6

Pretty impressive! what's the BOM here. That battery seems expensive (most expensive part?)

Thanks! Yes ~$700 without battery and I scored the Amprius pack on special for $700 but it is currently $1300.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#8

Post by the__alchemist » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #4

It's an impressive achievement for an amateur. He has separate motors for vertical and horizontal flights, which simplifies the design, but creates a rather bad inefficiency, the vertical motors create lots of drag during the horizontal flight. Maybe it's not a big deal, I'm not sure. Making motors rotate would add weight for sure, thus reducing the range.

Adding a tiltrotor mechanism is surely not worth the added complexity and weight, in this case. You're right though on the added weight and drag from having separate motors and props.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#9

Post by tsungxu » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #4

It's an impressive achievement for an amateur. He has separate motors for vertical and horizontal flights, which simplifies the design, but creates a rather bad inefficiency, the vertical motors create lots of drag during the horizontal flight. Maybe it's not a big deal, I'm not sure. Making motors rotate would add weight for sure, thus reducing the range.

It's actually not a terrible inefficiency.

With this config, the cruise motors and prop are optimally sized for cruise - which gives non trivial gains to both eta for propulsive motor efficiency and prop efficiency.

Vs a tiltrotor/wing/body in which the cruise motor has to do double duty as lifting motors. Given it takes anywhere from ~4-7x more power to hover (depending on disc loading) than to cruise, you can see how the motors are not in an optimal throttle/rpm band in this case. Archer's CTO Munoz has actually said this publicly.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#10

Post by the__alchemist » Tue, Jun 10, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

I'm curious how this compares to foam-frame designs. Being able to customize it is obviously a big advantage, as is the non-solid-infill of 3d-printed parts. I think for stiffness, 3d-printed frames don't work well for quadcopters compared to carbon fiber, but they sound like a nice alternative to foam for fixed-wing. I think the stiffness concern comes up in quads mainly when they do high-performance maneuvers that aren't a concern for the takeoff and landing this device does in that mode. (e.g. high accelerations/manevers of racing-style drones)

If anyone wants to try this: The parts he uses are all standard Chinese-made COTS you can buy on amazon and similar.

The ArduPilot firmware he uses is very flexible and robust, but setting it up is one of the worst UXs I've experienced. Commercial UASs almost universally use PX4 instead.