Guiness World record fastest drone build

That right there is one of the most powerful quadcopter drones in the world. But can we make it the world's fastest? For 2 and 1/2 years now, my dad and I have been building the world's fastest drones, snagging two Guinness World Records along the way. But just last month, Ben Biggs, an aerospace engineer [music] from Australia, smashed our old record of 580 km an hour, achieving 626 km an [music] hour with his drone Blackbird. Fortunately for us, for the past 5 months, we've been working [music] on improving every aspect of our drone. This is that story, and eventually we're going to find out if we can get our record back. We have three motor contenders for the new version of the drone. The first is the AOS Supernova 3220, and this is what we used for the previous drone. Then we have the AMX 2826, [music] and this motor is a bit taller than the AOS, but it's also got a smaller bell diameter. >> [music] >> And then lastly, we have the T- Motor 3120. This is kind of an in between of these two. And we actually used the T- Motor 3115 for our V2 drone. So, it's going to be very interesting to put all three of these head-to-head to see which is the best option. When you're comparing different motors, it's obviously really important to know how much thrust they're producing. And our current bench testing rig is literally just a box which pushes into the desk and doesn't give any thrust readings. So, my addition to that [music] is I want to put these four strain gauges under each corner of the box [music] and then essentially run them through an amplifier and then into my Arduino and hopefully get live thrust readings. [music] Everything is set up and ready for thrust testing. So, if we look over here, we've got the air unit actually recording the temperature readings from the thermal camera positioned above the drone here. And then we've also got it recording the thrust readings over there. From our testing, the AOS motors definitely [music] produce the most thrust, exceeding the MX and T motor from about 9 to 15%, which is pretty huge. and the MX motors had a slight edge over the T- Motors, but [music] it's really going to take real world testing to see which is the best choice for us. We're back at our favorite flying field to do [music] some more test flights, and we've got the drone set up here. Currently, it's got the MX motors installed. We're going to ramp it up one step at a time just to make sure none of the motors are overheating or [music] failing or anything like that. and hopefully we can get some good speeds. We ramped up the testing nice and slowly, capping off at 70% throttle and then at [music] 80% throttle and then at 90% throttle so that we could test the motor temperatures and check that everything is fine. >> 11 89 88 77. [music] We're now taking off the motor belt to check that it's okay cuz it's a bit hotter than the other three motors. And you can see a bit of the scraping there on the STA, which is what we saw on all of our world record drone motors. So, it's clearly not isolated to the AOS motors. And now we've actually got the second body here with the T- Motors installed. So, we're going to swap over the electronics and also try out these motors. [music] [music] To do a fair test, we also ramped up the speedruns with the T- Motors, starting on 70%, then 80%, [music] and then all the way up to 90%. >> 67 only, 64. >> What a beautiful sight. >> Even though the top end thrust is lower at the moment, reliability is even more important [music] to us. And we were incredibly impressed by the low temperatures of the T- Motors. That coupled with the fact that we saw zero scraping on them means that these are the motors we're choosing for our V4 drone. Ever since version one of this drone, we have struggled to film it in flight. And it's just because it's so small and so fast. But how do you film the world's fastest drone from the air? Well, this time we think we have the answer, and that is with the world's second fastest drone. Instead of just using the main camera and potentially missing the shot, we came up with the idea of installing an Insta3 X5 in the tail of the filming drone, which will allow us to shoot everything and reframe after we fly. To do this, we're using the dual nozzles on the Bamboo H2D. And this allows us to use two different filaments which interlock midprint. [music] And it's honestly looking so perfect. As you can see, this bottom part is the hard pie. So that screws into the drone. And then on the top here, we've got the flexible TPU. And this is awesome because this is fused together. You can see there's no way to pull that apart. [music] And how it works is we slide the 360 camera in here and then we've got a filming 360 drone there. It's super windy, but I think it should be fine. As you can see here, we got the drone in its beautiful new orange 3D printed body. And at [music] the back there, we've got the 360 camera mounted in the tail. The drone flew perfectly even with the extra weight in the tail. So, we're still going to be able to use the front-facing camera on this drone, but more importantly, how does the 360 footage look? In my opinion, it looks epic. And [music] because we're shooting in 8K, we're actually going to be able to refframe afterwards to get the perfect shot. [music] So, I am so excited to fly these drones together. Over the past few months, my dad has run tons of CFD simulations on Air Shaper to optimize the body shape, reduce drag, and increase our net thrust overall. And the final shape he came up with is actually slightly larger than what we had used previously. [music] This means we weren't actually able to fit and print the body in the Bamboo X1C, which is what we used for all of our previous drones. Fortunately, Bamboo Lab is sponsoring this video, and their new printer, the H2D, has a much bigger build volume, which was able to fit the new body perfectly. On top of that, we're able to use the dual nozzles to print the nylon through one nozzle and the support filament through the other nozzle. Let's pop this off here. And now the support just comes off so easily so that it's really nice. Besides making it really easy to remove the supports, the support filament also leaves behind a really smooth finish on the print which is perfect for something like this where aerodynamics is key. Now, because we have managed to reduce our drag on our drone, it is time [music] for us to up our motor KV from 800 on the old drone to our new motors, which are 900 KV. [music] That means these are going to spin at a higher RPM and generate a faster top [music] speed. So, now it's time to put these on here. I don't know why I'm always looking so [music] angry when I'm building drones, but you can trust me. I'm not angry. I'm just really focused. I've also done the tail of the world record drone in a dual filament print. So, we've got the hard pie on the top and the soft TP on the bottom. And this is so that when it lands on the ground, it actually absorbs the impact. And it seems to work really well. We've 3D printed these spinners for the propellers of the drone, but we really want to make sure that they won't fail midair. So, we've set up this bench testing rig where we can spin these up to really high RPM and see exactly when they will fail. It turns out our spinners are incredibly strong and we maxed out our ESC speed getting over 70,000 RPM, which is plenty considering our drone should never go above 40,000 RPM. The farm we normally fly at is busy harvesting, so we found this new farm and it's got a ton of open space, which is amazing. And today we're essentially testing our fully updated model. So it's got the new arrow, new motors, new everything. So we're going to get a really good indication of how fast it is. And on top of that, Darren, who you might remember from my previous videos, is also coming because he's going to fly the drone for the first time. It was finally time for Darren to take off and fly this drone for the very first time. Darren is a way better pilot than myself and he even struggled to fly this drone. It's just such a weird drone to fly with the ultra high pitch props, the tilting servo, and essentially needing [music] it to fly it like a plane that I didn't anticipate it would be so difficult to learn how to fly it smoothly >> on the mat. [laughter] >> Nice. It's a bit stressful. I'd rather be flying an alter. >> Really? [laughter] >> Darren needed to leave urgently. I think he needed to change his pants or something, but it was time to fly this drone at full speed and see what this new design could get up to. We had a really good upwind run where we got up to 583 km an hour, which I know is only 3 km an hour over our previous record, but remember this [music] was upwind and the wind was really strong today. Next, it was time to fly downward and get some ridiculous speeds. We got a crazy top speed of 649 km an hour. That is a perfect example of why you need to do the run in both directions because obviously the wind speed is basically like moving the drone on a treadmill. But we are so happy with that. [music] That was an incredible set of runs. We almost even got the 650 number which is amazing. If anybody's wondering why these shots look slower than you might think, it's because of the altitude. For comparison, here's our drone going over 600 km an hour. And [music] here's a DJI drone going full speed at around 60 to 70 km an hour. Obviously, if we want to film the world record drone with a filming drone, then we need two drones. And at the moment, we only have one fully assembled one. But I have 3D printed all of the parts on the Bamboo H2D. And I've gathered all the electronics here. So, now it's time to assemble it all together and get two drones up and running. For this version of the drone, we switched over to the APD [music] 120 F3 ESC's. We found that these are really efficient and also incredibly reliable, [music] which is very important to us. Heat. Heat. [music] I've spent a few hours now just sanding and polishing the PA6 CF print and [music] it's actually starting to feel pretty good. We've never gone to this extent before, but as you can probably see, it does look a little bit different to the unsanded print. And more importantly, it does feel a lot smoother. So, I think this is definitely going to give us a bit more topend speed. It was time to finally launch and fly the two drones together and on the first flight we captured absolutely nothing. It turns out this is actually incredibly difficult. We tried about three times and I think at best lost the drone after about 10 seconds of flying. These 360 follow cam shots are pretty cool though. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to fold midair, but hopefully we can do that by the next version. [music] >> [music] [music] >> In case anybody was wondering, this is what happens when a prop comes off midair. Today is the day of the official world record attempt. And I'm excited, but I'm also really nervous. At the moment, I'm just passing the time by sanding [music] everything and smoothing out all the parts to make sure they're as aerodynamic as physically possible. I finished sanding the bodies and they're feeling and looking really good. It's just a lot smoother all around and this feels really flush. And I've even sanded down these locking tabs here. So hopefully all these little improvements just give us a little bit more topend speed. One of the small changes I did is put super bright LEDs inside the transparent tail. And because we're going to fly around sunset time, I'm hoping that it's dark enough for you to actually be able to see the drone midair. So hopefully this is going to light up the sky and you'll be able to see it zooming past. The final change we're making to our drone is trimming our 7x5in APC propellers down to about 6 in. And we're hoping this reduces the overall drag on the propellers as well as increasing the prop tip efficiency. We're not really sure what kind of a difference it's going to make, but we're hoping it gives us a little bit more top end speed. The time has finally come to head out to the farm and see exactly what speeds we can get with [music] this drone. Our independent witnesses arrived and the weather was looking good. We had minimal wind which [music] means calm air and the temperatures were also very chilled. A big thanks to Blowberg Farm for letting us use their land. [music] >> [music] >> Heat up here. [music] >> [music] >> That was a good one. Y >> so [music] then we can see it. >> Before we go through the official results, I just want to mention that if you do want to pick up a Bamboo Lab H2D or any of their other 3D printers that I would recommend, I'll have links to the latest pricing and best deals in the description below. On top of that, Bambble has their Let's Make It Fund open at the moment, which gives up to $300,000 in funding to bring any creative idea or project just like this one to life. So, if you're interested in that, there'll also be a link for that down below. Over the space of an hour, we did four speedruns. Two of them in the northwest direction and two of them in the opposite southeast direction. Our fastest northwest run [music] went up to 656 km an hour. and our fastest southeast run went up to 659 kilometers an hour. This means we achieved a new Guinness World Record of an average speed of 657 km an hour or 408 mph. Now, it's on to the next person to break our record so that we can try and break it back. And [music] of course, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss