I made a 3D printed VTOL drone that can fly 130 miles

With no background in CAD, 3D printing or aerodynamics modeling

I made this 130 mile capable VTOL drone in only 90 days. It can fly for 3 hours on a single charge. That would make it one of the longest range and endurance 3D printed VTOLs in the world.

This is the thing I'm most proud of building to date!

Reid Hoffman called my project “superagency in action” and compared it to the Wright Brothers’s work pioneering powered flight!

Before this project, I was a total CAD, 3D printing and aerodynamic modeling beginner. I had only built and flown one VTOL before. My CAD skills were restricted to extrusions of basic sketches. My Bambu A1 3D printer was only one month old, and I had never tried printing foaming PLA. I had never used any aerodynamic modeling tools to simulate lift-to-drag ratios or stability curves like Cm-alpha.

This video edit ended up shorter than I planned. Being my first Youtube video with significant post production effort, I underestimated the work required to make a longer in-depth video with voiceover, edited footage, etc.

Because of that, I did not discuss dozens of project challenges like how I chose the design parameters, learnt airframe CAD design, sourced components, improved foaming PLA print quality, in-depth power loss troubleshooting, and many more challenges this project faced.

If you want more details on my design and build process, let me know!

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