Thicc 3.0
The biggest difference between Thicc and Siccario is they way Siccario elevates the thrust line to be aligned with its CG. I thought that if I could raise Thicc’s arms to the top plate I could get close to Siccario-like flight characteristics. I’d also lose the bottom plate, simplifying the frame a bit.
The biggest problem with a two plate frame is: how do you attach the arms to the bottom plate while you’re wiring it up? Sure you can screw on the arms, but then you’ll have to unscrew them to attach the top plate, and then the whole thing will be a floppy mess. Maintenance and repairs would be a nightmare. So my idea was to have the top plate bypass one of the three screw heads, so the arms are attached to the bottom plate with one screw even when the top plates is off.
I transferred the guts of my Thicc over, and it worked quite nicely.
Alex Johnston built a couple up as well, and while he liked it, he thought the 25mm gap was too much for M3 bolts to span, and he could feel them stretching when torqued down. Troy Naquin had some input as well. He wanted removable landing gear so it could fit in a smaller case. I thought I might as well start from scratch and draw up something for 9” that could be 6, 8, or 12s.
So, the arms go up to 10mm instead of 8mm, with a 3mm bottom plate and a 2.5mm top plate. Instead of 3 m3’s, the arms would be attached to the bottom plate with 2 m3’s, and finished with an M4 over the top plate.
The m3’s hold the arms on for the build, the M4 clamps everything together with much more force. A nice balance of strength and weight.
For the landing gear, I drew up a tpu sleeve that attaches to the M4 bolt. 12mm carbon legs simply slip on and off (don’t worry, it takes some effort to remove them).
The m3 nuts are under there keeping things aligned.
I spec’d mine up for 6s, something more powerful than Thicc and Siccario, but without the complexity of an 8 or 12s build with APD’s. I got some Brother Hobby 3115 1050kv’s, and HQ was kind enough to send 9x4x3’s and 9x5x3’s so that I could have higher pitched props down below like and X8 should. I’m a careless slapdash builder, which was kinda ok on little guys but not so good for Cinelifters. Clint Hild is a super meticulous builder so he did the honors.
Best view of the elevated thrust line.
Troy built a few as well, and he went off the reservation a bit. He noticed that if he used his DAC cam mount there’d be enough clearance for 10” props, so he made a 10” 8s build with 80a iFlight esc’s.
1500g payload, 2 4400mah 4s batteries, 6 minute flight time.
Here it is with Troy and James Near’s DAC mount. Take off the landing gear, flatten the mount, and the whole thing’s no taller than the two motors.
And that’s about it. It’s a slightly bigger Thicc, with 10mm instead of 8mm arms, thrust line closer to the camera mass, 9”-10” instead of 8”, and with easily removable landing gear that makes it super slim for transport.