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Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Polystyrene Cutter

Having been refered to in this post, a very important tool for easy cutting of the bare polystyrene boards was custom built because of saving some money.

While these can be found on the market, good models with adjustable heat may cost over 30 euros. By analysing the kind of hardware I would need, I found that it wouldn't be such a big problem because I already had most of the stuff in my electronics scrap containers.

The only thing I didn't had laying around was the support for the hot wire, which I had to buy. I just used a metal support with a wooden holder for a conventional saw, which proved to serve the purpose just fine:


Thursday, June 28, 2012

Letting it hover...

While the building phase can be an enjoyable experience, grabbing the sticks, putting the chopper on the ground, and gently increasing the thrust until that custom build apparatus starts to appear light on its stands is where the real fun begins. Would we ignore the noise of the struggling motors, and this styrofoam-shielded quadcopter would seem like a magical object for which gravity would be opening an exception everytime we wanted to. There is no magic, just technology, but still there is a sense of victory in tricking gravity in a brute force manner. Not in a magnificent scale as Howard Hughes H-4 Hercules, or lighter than air as Bartolomeu de Gusmão's flying bird, but still admirable for mimicking birds in the size and ability to fly (in a cumbersome way however), and for hovering like few of these animals can.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Multicopter Madness


R/C airplane modelling exists for several decades, but with late improvements and reduced cost in microelectronics, energy storage, and RF communications, products in this domain have suffered a significant improvement in quality and innovation.