7" Kinetic Interceptor Drone

I designed, prototyped, and refined the housing, arms, and motor mounts of this 7" kinetic interceptor drone. I created the CAD assembly and used a Bambu P1S to prototype the housing and motor mounts. I cut and drilled the composite tubes for the arms. The final model used SLS printing for a smooth surface finish and more uniform material properties.

Airframe design

This airframe uses the printed housing as the main structural element. The most difficult design challenge was designing a 3D printed structure that was strong and rigid enough to withstand the high forces of flight. There are stiffening ribs on the interior and exterior designed to resist the vibrations from the motors, thereby preventing excessive noise feedback to the flight controller. Vents allow passive electronics cooling. The housing is designed to accomodate an agressive angle of attack and present a small profile to minimize drag.

Building fast

Together with one other mechanical engineer and two electrical engineers, we took this drone from concept to successful flight testing in 5 weeks. We built, tested, and iterated extremely fast.

The finished prototype