Airframe concept · RL1-100 Rev D
A 1000 mm quadcopter that holds a Starlink Mini in the air for an hour. Drag to turn it — or switch the printed shell off to see the structure underneath.
The model above is not an illustration. Every plate in it is extruded from the same DXF files that would go to the factory — same octagon, same bolt circles, same 52 holes in the upper deck.
The performance figures are not brochure numbers either. The hover model is momentum theory with its figure-of-merit calibrated against DJI's own published M350 data — 6.47 kg on 21-inch propellers for 55 minutes on 526 Wh. Applied to this airframe and the 1 554 Wh semi-solid pack already in the building, it returns 72 minutes of still-air hover at 12.2 kg.
Nothing here needs to be invented. The propulsion is an off-the-shelf integrated unit, the flight controller is a standard Pixhawk-class board, and the airframe is carbon plate and tube — the same construction as every agricultural drone flying today.
It folds for transport. The arms hinge down at R110, the landing gear braces unbolt, and the payload plate lifts off its four standoffs — 390 × 390 × 470 mm, or 0.09 m³ against 1.56 m³ deployed. That is the difference between freight and one hard case travelling as cargo baggage. Press FOLD in the viewer to see it.
Rev D adds an enclosed printed shell — a top crown, four side panels with a connector bank, position and battery-status lights, and a battery shroud, all in glass-filled ASA. None of it is load-bearing, which is exactly why printing is the right process for it: it protects the electronics from weather and dust, cleans up the airflow, and turns a bare frame into something that reads as equipment rather than a prototype. Switch it off in the viewer and the carbon structure underneath is unchanged.