3D Printed Drone Gaurds

Hello! This is my submission to the make resilient contest by instructables. it consists of a 3d printed drone propeller guard made using Tinkercad

• Filament 
• 3d printer
• Ruler/Caliper
• Tinkercad

• In order to create the drone guard, you need the measurements of the drone. The two main components that you will need to measure is the diameter of the drone motor mount and the length of the propeller from the motor shaft.

• These measurements can vary between people depending on how your drone looks and and how you want the actual guard to be mounted. 

• For my Guard, I went for an attachment that slides on top of the motor mount and stays there flush, without any complicated parts. For this, I needed to find the diameter of the top part of the motor mount, which allowed me to make a mount that is not too lose or not too tight. 

• For my measurements, I used a ruler, a ruler will be enough to get an ok measurement. Using a caliper would much better since it would give you more accurate measurements. In the end, using the ruler is fine since you will definitely need to change the measurement in your print many times to find the correct fit. 

As stated in the beginning, I used Tinkercad to build my design of the drone guard. The guard does not have to be designed in Tinkercad and can be made in other cad applications like Onshape, Fusion 360 and many more. At the end, Tinkercad is the best one since it’s free, extremely beginner-friendly and only requires a browser to run.

The tool shown above is a 3d printed piece consisting of holes measured to a varying diameters, you can make this for yourself to find the perfect diameter for your drone mount.

Here are some of my designs

• (Figure 1) 

This was my first 3d print I did for this project, I used it to gain some experience on 3d printing since it was my very first print and also to see if the propeller fits inside it’s space.

• (Figure 2)

I added 4 mounting beams to the previous print, which allowed me to actually see if it would mount to the drone. The diameter was too big for the drone, which made the attachment very loose.

• (Figure 3)

I decided to make the guard smaller by cutting down the unwanted areas, since it would make the guard lighter. With this design, I was able to find the perfect diameter for the mount.

• (Figure 4)

I make 4 copies of my previous design for the 4 motors of my drone

First download your file, I downloaded my files in STL format because it is the most common file format used in 3d printing. You can download your file by pressing the export button on the top right button on Tinkercad.

Enjoy your drone guards!!!

Here is a video of my drone guards in action