Hey guys, i created this just to get you guys thinking, nowadays there are a lot of quads and tri's that people build and everyone sticks to the original designs. But if we start thinking out of the box there are a lot of possibilities that can change the tricopters abilities. The engineering students who study in various colleges have the amount of knowledge required to build out of the way things but they never do and i dont know why . Even though i agree that everyone's 1st or second build should be simple and follow others designs the third or fourth build should be their own designs.

I am currently designing something new which is out of the way. A tricopter Y with a central EDF thrust vectored unit to provide level flight in the X,Y axis,this means that the tricopter can travel level in the X,Y axis without the requirement for the craft to tilt in order to travel in that direction. This is useful for AP/AV applications mainly.I wont reveal my thrust vectoring rig design yet as there is a lot left to do but the idea of the way the central unit vectors the thrust came to me from the RC transmitter itself   . If anyone can figure out what i am talking about in the previous sentence please do post it. And if anyone has ideas of how the central EDF unit can be thrust vectored in two degrees(X,Y) please do share them. Why EDF? Because getting faster stream of air vectored takes a lot less space and faster changes can be made. A standard motor with a slow fly prop takes up a lot of space and vectoring something like that is not possible because the prop comes into play. The central EDF unit will be having a 70mm fan for optimal thrust in this application.The EDF unit will be placed exactly at the CG, when and if a motor fails the edf unit will act as that motor temporarily until the tricopter can land. The board for this will be designed by me and my older friend who is a electronics engineer(Mainly Him). Any ideas are Welcome!!!!!!  .

I will post the basic design in a week or two without the central thrust vectoring mount.

Amazing idea
we use ready made electronics and so we dont make new and creative stuff.
Good luck bro!

This design seems to be a little inefficient. Many use a single bigger motor in the center to generate extra lift but that is only for heavy lifting purposes (read Hobbyking Beer Lift multis ). Anyways this seems to be quite a novel idea. I would like to see how you integrate this into the existing FCs. Handling a separate throttle channel seems to a bit complex. In av/fpv applications we use gimbles that cancel out the tilt/pitch for the camera.
Best of luck!

Thanks man  , i am also using off the shelf parts, will use the KK2.0 and add the self designed board to it to control thrust vectoring. Sir Rolf who created the kk2.0 is currently working on the next version and i hope HK releases it before i order my stuff from them. It will take quite some time to design the whole thing and making the central mount will be difficult as i have not yet entered a engineering college, so i dont have the CNC machine required for making the mount

Yes you are right controlling two throttle channels is a challenge, but that is where a custom board comes into play. And gimbals are good but having a Tri stay level in order for AV/AP is the main challenge.

And i dont expect this to be completed soon so sit back and relax you will see the whole thing coming together over a long period of time because even the arms are being designed by me to absorb vibrations so most of the parts will have to be made by me. I dont know how long this will take as this is not a competition project its not my priority.

A small doubt.
In total you are using 4 motors, right. Three at each end of Y and one in the intersection(EDF).
doesn't it became quad???
Pls correct me if i understood it in wrong way..
Anyway the idea seems really good 
I think the most difficult part would be in conserving the angular momentum
All the best

you can set up a servo with the edf unit hinged....it can change it from facing down to facing sideways...but you will need a servo with a lot of throw....
also because the other motors are still running, the edf fan doesnt have to be to powerful....
why not make aerofoils on the wings, so you can maaybe switch of the quad part, and switch over too plane...

Sudhir the EDF at the intersection doesnt help in lifting the frame(it can though), the motors with slow fly props at the end of each arm of the tri are the major contributors to lifting the frame and work in sync(If i want to roll the frame towards left the right motor speeds up and the left motor slows down an vice versa).The EDF unit at the center will not work in sync with the other 3 motors and will be completely controlled by the user and its main functions are to move the tri level on the X,Y axis. Even in a quad you cannot control each of the motor's throttle, its the collective throttle that you control(If you move throttle stick to 30% all motors give you 30% increase from 0% throttle[the percentage depends on the amount of power each is given by the power distribution board] but its just an example. So i wont call it a quadcopter but a modified tricopter.

You sure about this part?

Something like this? Its a very nice idea

or
http://drtungym.blogspot.in/2009/10/greg-s-vtol-settings.html
But it just becomes a VTOL then.
You mean to say tri?

you could have a bad board

I mean the distribution board could under power the fc and cause the motors to run slow on low power, but it will still be 30% of whatever the power is, unless you add special firmware.

@neil.... yea i meant tri..

Here is a link to my newly designed DT750 in Google sketchup , if anyone wants to use it for their designing feel free. After all now its anyway open. I made this for the tricopter i am currently designing, it does not have the correct number of stator poles because i couldnt incorporate it(The DT750 has 12,  this has only 8 ). Enjoy      

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=7150d27a665b24003efde39806a4589a&prevstart=0 - DT750(SketchUp model)

Does that mean the EDF will be used to stabilize the craft in X Y axis?

Yes Dharmik and if needed it could increase the rate of climb/descent

Been trying to understand the idea from your posts. As you said 3 motors(in sync) will be used to provide the thrust  while EDF will stabilize the craft and it will be manually operated by user, then FC id not required here. And i believe without FC it's hard to stabilize the multirotor especially when its directed by thrust vectoring. As heli has tail rotor to provide counter torque, tri has servo attached to the arm to prevent it rotate and yaw authority. Hope you understand what i am trying to say

What I understood from his posts, he is just putting an edf on a normal tri. Now when this tri is hovering, he will use the edf to make the thing go forward and backwards without pitching the craft. But the thing is, the craft would still pitch if he separates the edf for th main FC. To cancel out the pitch, he needs to spool up the front motors when he applies power to the EDF. Another thing that he could do is to get a FC that does has a very good "stabilize"  mode.

@Neil: Get your theories straight first, as this is a very ambitious project. One of my quads does not even have a "power distribution board" The PDB does not "supply" power. It merely provides parallel output from the battery. When you increase the throttle, say 30%, all the motors DO NOT get equal amounts of power. The FC gives different PWM signals to each of the ESCs which in turn run their respective motors with different powers so as to stabilize the craft. Say for example, if a tri has its cg at the center, the rear motor always has to run with a bit more power than the other two, as it has to continually take care of the yaw as well as lifting its share of the weight.

Without a yaw... how can you control the torque...
It will rotate.. a center edf cannot balance the whole stuff coz the edf produces less space to travel through but a multi rotor needs a bigger space to travel through..

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No no no you understood me wrong the EDF wont be vecotring thrust vertically, it will vector it horizontally, i will be using a hacked servo to do this job. So the tri wont pitch and my fc has auto level so any pitch that happens due to the edf on  tri will be corrected.
What you said is right you could directly solder the postives and negatives instead of a PDB but i like to have it. And thats why i said that unless you dont have special firmware on the FC all motors wont get equal power, my FC does this and i have auto correction software.  I use PPM stuff by the way. And the FC has something special in built by my friend which demodulates everything internally. so my FC is directly connected to the motors. The main purpose of external esc is if you fry one or something goes wrong you just replace it. But to save weight there are a lot of things you could do instead of using ESC (What exactly i cant tell you because my friend never explained it to me and he said it was too complex so I let it be).

I will have yaw control, just like a normal tri using a servo on tail motor

You really are not making any sense now And when did I ever say that you are going to vector the edf's thrust vertically