Spaceships from the Star Wars universe have inspired many of us, and DIYer Luis is no exception. His fascination, however, has gone far beyond mere admiration. He has actually built a model that can fly just like the ones in the movies. Introducing the incredible Star Wars X-Wing drone, capable of flying at speeds of over 200 km/h.
A creation of YouTuber and DIYer Luis (a.k.a. German Engineer), the drone was perfected after about six different iterations. The flying prototype has been achieved, the builder informs, after countless crashes. However, now that it is functional, the engineer has made the 3D printing files of the build available for other users to replicate.
Designer: German Engineer
The idea of the X-Wing drone came to Luis after he saw a similar idea developed by Red Bull. It was a First-Person View drone (shaped like a slender rocket) designed to fly at speeds of over 310 km/h. This ingenious design got him into mulling the possibility of replicating a T-65 X-Wing Starfighter from Star Wars capable of real-world flying, which many DIYers have tried before but failed, because the basic wing structure of such a drone is unstable in high-speed flying.
It may have been a hindrance, but not an idea killer for Luis, who has combined 3D printing, carbon fiber, and ingenious engineering to design an X-Wing that can actually fly. He took the flyer for a trip to Lake Como, Italy, for the flight test of the final prototype, which turned out fast–flying at over 200 km/h, though not as fast as Red Bull, its inspiration. The 3D printed drone was, according to the creator, able to reach a top speed of 216 km/h (134 mph) in a total airborne time of about 10 minutes.
According to the details in the video detailing the build process, the initial iterations of the drone comprised a flimsy carbon fiber frame that had vibrations, and the drone crashed mid-flight after the controls shut down. Through repeated crashes and amends, Luis thought of 3D printing structural components of the drone with carbon fiber reinforced filament, which was a faster process of creation, and eventually a drone with 3D printed body panels was conceived, which finally had the structural integrity required for high-speed flying.
The flying is as much made possible with the placement of the engines as with the structural integrity. Instead of putting them close to the flyer’s body (as in the Star Wars movies themselves), Luis has used 4 FPV motors on the wingtips. This may not be movie-level accuracy, but the tweak makes flying possible, resulting in a drone capable of hitting top speeds of 216 km/h. Besides this, most of the actions are pretty close to those in the movies.
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