3D STL Files Available HERE

Is anyone else’s favorite movie series Terminator? I LOVE the Terminator story and can remember the first time I went to see the live action show in Universal Studios Orlando years ago. Great to see those killing machines in life! Something that struck my eye though was the flying mini-hunters. These were the 4 small drones that chased John Connor and the t-800 into the parking garage. Although they were easily destroyed by our favorite T-800, I still loved them. It was just recently that I visited Universal Studios again and thought, I may be able to build one of these, 3D print it and then actually make it fly… Well so I did.

It took a lot of time to design in the 3D software to pull this off. I am not very good at 3D design and this would be my third big project to design using Autodesk Inventor. I also knew that this would never print to 1:1 scale using a standard Makerbot Printer, So I broke it up into multiple parts and was then assembled. I also wanted this to fly, So I needed the 4 motors and props to fit INSIDE of this drone. Most drones the props on the outside of the weight, but in the real Mini-Hunter that was not the case. So I designed this to use small 4″ props and high speed motors. I had to offset two motors to be above the other two to allow clearance, and that has not caused any problems so far.

I started printing this drone and testing it out. I used a DJI Naza V2 to be my controller for my quad system. I used 2900kv motors and 4″ Tri-Props for the lift. The entire frame was original laser cut acrylic, but ended up making it out of aluminum for better strength. It fly well without the gun attached to the bottom, but as soon as I attached the gun, It had issues staying up. I assumed this is because it blocked the airflow from the propellers. So I ended up making the gun hollow from the top down.

I needed to get all of the electronics inside of the Drone body. So I made the entire main body hollow to allow the fit of the electronics. Now the main controller with the sensors really needs to be in the middle of the system so that it can measure the movements better. So that was mounted to the top above the Motors.

Now for the eyes, I was able to use a servo connected to the Naza’s camera tilt servo. That way when I used the lever on the DJI controller, the eyes could move left and right. This really gave it the feel of being alive and looking for John Connor! I used a simple mechanism to make the eyes move together with one servo.

After all of this and testing out its flying capabilities, I glued the two halves together and filled in all the gaps (which there were plenty of). This little drone got a lot of sanding, priming and more sanding. I wanted it really smooth so that the metallic paint job would work well. The Mini-Hunters from the movie were mirror like chrome. I am not a big fan of chrome, and stuck with a more metallic look.