2 min read

Bone Plate

Bone Plate

Perfect for mounting your ArduPilot (Both Mega and PixHawk) or any other large size flight Controller. The BatBone comes with mounting holes for the standard 45mm size Flight Controllers, Like Hobbyking’s KK2 series boards, but it lacks the ability to mount larger flight controllers easily.

Many people, like myself simply Velcro the flight controller to the small surfaces on the top of the frame, but this doesn’t provide a sturdy and secure way to mount, the arguably most important piece of your multicopter, your flight controller. Another problem is that some flight controllers don’t have mounting holes; this is result of the design of the board, or a case that the board is in – this is the situation I am in, my APM 2.6 comes in a very nice case that both protects the board and stabilizes the barometric pressure sensor’s readings.

I developed a plate that sits above the frame and allows me to mount my flight controller on a large flat surface with velcro that covers the entire area of my flight controller, allowing for a much more stable mount. I designed it using a free alternative to Adobe Illustrator called Inkscape. I took many measurements and printed out countless renderings of my design before I submitted it to an online laser cutting service called Ponoko. I selected a 3mm Gray tinted acrylic for the looks and had it made, more specifically 6 of them, as I crammed as many as I could on their smallest sheet.

Raw Piece

I paired the acrylic with a set of threaded Aluminium standoffs.

KitAll required pieces

The standoffs are attached to the plate, and then to the Bat Bone itself. The Hole pattern allows the Flite Test Camera Tray to be attached with little modification, just shorter screws than were included in the Flite Test Kit. The Standoffs are M3 size and I used a set of 12mm button head screws from my local hardware store.

Single Standoff Attached

All Standoffs AttachedAll Standoffs Attached

Some finesse is required when attaching the acrylic to the BatBone as the laser cutting is not perfectly accurate and the standoffs can be manipulated, but in the end it looks and works great.

BottomUnderside of the BatBone

TopTop of the Bat Bone with the Plate Attached