This is my 3D-printable hexacopter (drone) frame, designed to sit in roughly the same size niche as the old DJI Flame Wheel F550 kits, but with the ability to easily print and replace anything you break if (when!) a crash happens. If you want to know more, you can see it flying in part three of my build videos for this project.

Filament

You need a stiff filament to help prevent flexing and thus oscillation in the frame when it's flying - I personally used Bambu PA6-GF, as it was the stiffest of the filaments I tested (see my video testing various filaments!), while also coming in a range of nice colours, unlike PA6-CF.

I suspect that ABS would do alright, but anything less stiff than that (e.g. PETG) is going to have a bad time. I'd avoid PLA for the usual reasons of “melting in a hot car”, but if all you have is a choice between PETG and PLA, PLA is definitely stiffer and thus a better choice.

Components

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Body

• 12 M3x50 socket-head machine screws plus nuts
• 6 M3x15 socket-head machine screws plus nuts
• 8 M3x10 socket-head machine screws plus nuts

Propulsion system

• 6 Flash Hobby D2830 motors
• 6 Readytosky 30A Opto ESCs
• 6 uxcell RC Propellers (9 inch diameter)
• 2 Zeee 4S 3300mAh LiPo batteries
• XT30 connectors for power wiring

You don't have to use any of these exact components - just ensure they're suitable for this size of multirotor, and that your props are 10 inches in diameter or less. If you're unsure, 9 inch props with 1000kV motors on a big enough 4S battery is a good start.

Avionics

• Cube Orange flight controller
• Here3 GPS
• Holybro SiK Telemetry Radio v3
• SR10 Archer Plus RC receiver

Any Ardupilot-compatible set of avionics will work here - this is just what I had from the previous crashed drone this replaced. If I was going new I'd probably get a Pixhawk 6C with bundled GPS receiver, as I have a Pixhawk 6-series controller on my bigger drone and it's working great. 

Printing

If you're on an X1 or enclosed P1, the included 3MF file has settings that should work well.

Otherwise, you'll want to print this with a medium to large layer height and a bit more infill and wall thickness than you might usually do, for strength. I like to iron the top surfaces on the body pieces but that's not required.

Arms and body should be printed in a stiff filament (e.g. PA6-GF); leg pieces can be something cheaper or more flexible (e.g. PETG-HF).

Due to the size of the pieces, this doesn't fit on an A1 Mini or similar small printers. Sorry!

Assembly

Everything on this frame is designed around M3 screws. First, screw the four legs into the bottom part of the body using the M3x10 screws - there are pins on the legs that go into holes on the four leg positions, and then use the screws to hold them in place. This part is a bit annoying, and I should probably improve how they attach.

Once the four legs are on, the struts press-fit into one of the triangular holes on each leg. It only fits in one of them, but is quite a snug fit. 

Then, the top and bottom body portions screw into each other through the arms, using M3x50 screws for the outside two holes and M3x15 screws for the inside screw hole. The screw holes are slightly tight so they also catch the screw threads; this makes it all very secure but it does make it a bit of a pain to screw those long 50mm ones in.

If you want to use the battery sled, it's in a separate STL. Print it, slide the tabs into the long slots on the bottom piece, and then use zipties to secure it (I use the same zipties to also hold my wiring inside the body).

Feedback

Built one? Have ideas on how to improve it? Let me know - this is the first iteration of this that I got to fly, so it's not bad, but there's likely a lot that can be done in terms of improvements. I do specifically want to try and reduce the number of screws it takes.