Mini Octocopter Using 3 inch props

Mini octocopter For 3 inch props

This octocopter design features 8x 1407 3500kv motors, 3 inch 3 blade racing drone props, DJI Naza v2 flight controller, 2 I-flight 45 amp 4 in 1 mini esc's, and a 1500mah 3s graphene battery. The entire frame is printed including the stand-offs and is assembled using all 2mm screws. I used sunlu carbon fiber PLA for all of the plates, standard green metallic pla for the stand-offs and gps mount and Black TPU for the 4 landing feet. With the plates i was having a bit of trouble with all the travels on the first layer for all the screw holes so I decided to put a very thin .1mm first layer with no holes for a clean easy to print bottom surface and drilled them out after. the only way to get this feature to show up is to change the first layer height to .1mm, the plates I printed at .3mm for speed as there is no real details in the parts to capture. 3 bottom layers including the first 1 at .1mm and 2 top layers with 30% grid infill. This build requires at the minimum a 300mmx300mm bed and I had to rotate the plates to get them to fit and move one of my clips holding the glass down over a bit towards the center. Overall tho its a very simple, easy build that only takes about 2 days to complete start to finish. The parts all print pretty quickly. I did cheat a bit on the the stand-offs, I put them on their sides and sunk them into the plate by .2mm to give them a nice flat spot to print off of and it also gives them strength being printed horizontally. (I would recommend doing this as well.)
The finished platform is quite strong, the blades are protected well and it flies extremely stable as an octocopter should, without being intimidating to fly like a larger octo could be. I'm very happy with the end result of this project and I will post some flight videos of it later on. the hardest part of the entire build is installing all of the screws... there are sooo many. 2 for each stand-off and 4 for each motor, it certainly feels tedious. The 2 halves are held together quite securely via a bottom center plate and a top plate, with 2 H shaped stand-off bridging the the outer plates along with the gps mount serving as a 4th 4 point connecting bracket.
If you have always wanted to fly an octocopter and don't have the space or just like the stability of an octo in a much smaller form factor this would be the build for you.
Update 7/10/2023: added thrust ducts to the design to increase efficiency, this experiment led to about a 40% increase in battery life. they slide in through the top snug with the prop off, the prop is installed after they are in place.

.1mm first layer height, .3mm layer height, 30% grid infill