Release Hook for Quadcopter (The Flying Beaver Called Pig!)

Simple release mechanism which i used to lift a teddy up with a paragliding wing underneath my quadcopter.

So just to explain the reason why before we look at the mechanism! My Son Thomas attends Beavers on Thursday evening (beavers is youngest group of Cubs/Scouts in the UK) Unsurprisingly they have a beaver as a mascot. The boys were asked to give the beaver a name and decided on "Pig" So you could say this is getting a Pig to fly????

Step 1: The Build

This was a quick and easy build to amuse the kids. as you can see the main piece of wood is 1/8" plywood. I cut out a piece 80mm long by 30mm wide, i then cut the rectangular hole for the servo to mount, Obviously this hole should suit the servo size you have, as for me i had a small servo recovered from a bixler i crashed a while ago and conveniently i had soldered an extension onto the lead.

Then i marked out the angled slot and cut that out. Once i had sanded the slot to remove all possible snags i glued the servo into place. i have glued the servo on the front and not bothered with the mounts which are underneath. with a piece of wire on the servo horn i then worked out the size of the angled piece of 1/4" plywood and glued that into position.

Lastly i then worked out where the hole had to be drilled and went through at an angle with a 3mm drill bit. With the hook connected to the gear channel of the receiver i checked the stroke and adjusted the length of the wire to suit.

To suspend the hook from the underneath of the quad i used some strong coated string and made sure that none of the weight was pulling on the servo lead. So before lifting the teddy into the air i did a trial lift with a water bottle and discovered the hook worked really well and the quad was very capable of lifting 600 grams.

So there really isn't much to this build BUT if you look at the design it's nice to point out that the weight the pin is holding is not pulling down the servo which wouldn't be able to take the weight. The weight is pulling the wire against the wood and once the wire pulls out of the hole it is free to swing out of the way.