Is it a glass-reinforced foam construction?
Polyurethane with carbon wing spars and a carbon tail boom. The air-frame is then coated with epoxy resin and re-enforced with fiber tape where necessary.
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First flight test, a gliding test to check for anomalies and refine CG was today and was an incredible success. The UAV just seems to want to jump into the air and while we have work to do on the control surfaces it is an absolute pleasure to fly. The team is ecstatic with the result, even more so given that this went straight from computer to flight with no testing. All simulations were done in Solidworks CFD and they were pretty much spot on. Our Aerodynamicist Dr Becker van Niekerk got the wing design Spot on.
Video from the flight is here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vna8b19aenx0xh2/Drone%20test%20flight.mp4?dl=0
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Congratulations! I’m following this project with interest. Keep going!
Same here. Can’t wait to see how it performs in the field, I really hope it helps you guys.
Thanks, we are making good progress with the 60% scale and hope to have this deployed ASAP to start gathering data to assist with the build of the full scale version
Hey Robert, this looks very promising, and good weight. Did you go for the 3D-printed wing structure for this prototype? Did you use vacuum lamination technique or “just” hand-laminating and free-air curement?
A warning if you’ll be flying this anti poaching drone in Africa: ants love to eat EPO foam as we experienced ourselves:
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Thanks for the heads up, fortunately our latest airframe is fully MJF printed in PA12
In fact, that might be a good and valuable observation for future manufacturing procedures: as such, I am thinking about the potential to produce fully composite airframes out of laminated EPO cores, emptied by ants - just perfect 
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We opted for a higher tech approach (although if you could train the ants do do precision work its a cheap option 
). HP’s new MJF printer is a game changer although it still has two big limitations being build volume and material option. We have worked around both and the sample wing and fuselage sections are magnificent to say the least.
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So today marks the day where the air-frame design is locked down. No more changes for now, just some work on the control surfaces and servo bays and then off to MJF print the sections and assemble the first actual air-frame and begin powered flight testing.
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This is the rear tilt nacelle. We have specced 2 servo manufacturers but are only going to use KDE motors and ESCs.
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Holy cr4p, that’s a stunning plane design. Good luck, please post photos here when it’s real!!!
Thanks and will do, only a few more days and then parts of it are on Mentis 3D’s HP MJF for printing. This is what it looked like under the skin but we dropped some components after FEA.
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@panascape Hello Robert ,
I was just curious(actually I should have written hope) if covid-19 had an impact on poaching as the market for this is impacted … or I am totaly wrong and on the contrary people are rushing to get more ‘‘magic powder’’ for the cure ?
Poaching seems to be at a normal level which is still not good especially seeing we are under strict lock-down and initiatives like ours have been set back a month or so.
While were are in locked-down we spent time perfecting some of the features that were planned for prototype 2. The flap system as demonstrated in this video will now be included in the first prototype we print.
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Hey Robert,
it’s been a while since your last updates on the project. Any news you would want to share with us?
Sorry for the lack of updates, we have all been flat out heading towards the 3D print deadline. Our wing FEA is complete, the wing lowering mechanism is complete (servo is replaced with a drum and cable system in the final version) and the landing/navigation lights are integrated into the design. We are busy integrating the flaps and battery bays in the wings and are then will print the wing and fuselage cell to bench test.
