Tie-Fighter Quadcopters Anyone Can Build

These are things of beauty, and when in flight, the Tie Fighter Quadcopters look even better because the spinning blades become nearly transparent. Most of the Star Wars-themed quadcopter hacks we’ve seen are complicated builds that we know you’re not even going to try. But [Cuddle Burrito’s] creations are for every hacker in so many different ways.

tie-fighter-drone-partsFirst off, he’s starting with very small commodity quadcopters that are cheap (and legal) for anyone to own and fly. Both are variations of the Hubsan X4; the H107C and the H107L. The stock arms of these quadcopters extend from the center of the chassis, but that needs to change for TFFF (Tie Fighter Form Factor). The solution is of course 3D Printing. The designs have been published for both models and should be rather simple to print.

ABS is used as the print medium, which makes assembly easy using a slurry of acetone and ABS to weld the seams together. Motor wires need to be extended and routed through the printed arms, but otherwise you don’t need anything else. Even the original screws are reused in this design. Check out test flights in the video after the break As for the more custom builds we mentioned, there’s the Drone-enium Falcon.

25 thoughts on “Tie-Fighter Quadcopters Anyone Can Build

    1. I agree. I think that this is rather cool. It displays creativity and technical know how. What is hacking other than a way to channel ones creativity and know into something that they like. If you have a suggestion, voice it. If you see a way to make this project better, please share. If you don’t like the project then don’t look at the page. If you think that HaD is becoming to sensationalized then stop visiting the site, but please for the sake of those who like these projects don’t post detracting comments just for the sake of being heard. There are enough stupid comments already on the internet. Please don’t bring them to hackaday.

  1. very nice ! will try it on my x4.

    I already tried 3D printing a little payload bay to fit between the rubber feet and the chassis to carry a larger battery, but it is already very much at its edge of lifting capabilities. I wonder how much the performance degraded due to the extra weight here.

    1. The TIE body adds 2 g to the X4, which isn’t bad. The stock X4 can carry about 9 g with reasonable performance, so this body shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

      I think the bigger problem is the fact that the side panels are going to really mess up the aerodynamics, I imagine turning is pretty poor.

      1. actually it was just an X, with holes in the corners to fit in between the arms and rubber feet, with in the middle a few holes so i could rubberband on a slightly larger battery, but it could barely lift it. The plastic probably didn’t weigh more than a few gram, if that. The battery however ..

    1. It doesn’t weigh enough to require registration. And if it does weigh enough (after the extra parts he added), he can put the registration number inside the battery compartment, per FAA regulations. There is no need to display the number on the outside.

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