MK1E 4 Inch Drone

Problem & goal

Build a working 4-inch FPV quadcopter with no kit and no existing frame — an aircraft where every part of the design was mine.

Constraints

Student budget, skills I was still developing, and sole ownership of structure, manufacturing, electronics, and tuning — plus the Personal Project requirement to document planning, action, and reflection.

Process & decisions

I designed the airframe in Autodesk Fusion and prototyped structural parts in PC and PCCF. Those prints flexed too much under flight loads, and carbon fibre was hard to get, so the final main frame was CNC-milled from aerospace-grade aluminium at Protolabs. The camera cradle and top plate stayed PCCF prints.

There was never an electronics kit: I chose every component and did all the wiring — motors, radio, GPS, and DJI O4 Air Unit. Early flights without FPV were nearly impossible to control, which is what pushed me to add the O4.

Result

The MK1E flies on the custom aluminium frame with FPV. Specs are above; flight footage, a development montage, the technical drawing, and an interactive CAD model are below.

What I learned

A drone is one system: frame, power, radio, GPS, and video have to be designed together. Material choice is part of that — print to find where it fails, then use metal where it has to hold.

Flight demo

Flight footage streams from Google Drive.

DJI_0010 — Open in Drive

DJI_0005 — Open in Drive

MK1E 4-inch Drone Development Montage

Sky's the Limit, Aspire Forever — Open in Drive

Technical drawing

Orthographic technical drawing of the MK1E frame — dimensions, layout, and construction details.

Open in Google Drive