Mavic Mini Propellor Guard

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

Here is my final (or finally working...) propellor guards for the Mavic Mini.
My goal for this design:
compact size (didn't think the guards should require a larger pocket than the Mavic!)
designed for FDM - minimal tensile stress in Z direction and no support required
each guard to be interchangeable
locked onto drone arms without scratching or damaging the Mavic
minimal design - 360 bumpers, protection from hitting a ceiling, but not overkill
I tried to maximize the grip around the motor while leaving room for the extended arms on the front of the Mavic Mini. Needed to do this so the same prop guards would fit on the front and back. These guards are also interchangeable left-to-right; just flip a pair over to use on the left.
After printing 4 guards, cut 8 short (70mm) pieces of your favourite colour 1.75mm PLA. Make loops - as shown - by pushing the PLA pieces into the holes in the guard. A needle-nosed pliers helps to bend the filament into a short arch. If the holes are blocked - use the smallest allen key from your printer to clear out the holes a bit, and cut the filament on an angle. This makes an arch that extends just over the propellers if your flying indoors and don't want to wreck your ceilings. Remember that 2 guards are flipped over to use on the left side!
The next hurdle was to fix them securely onto the Mavic prop arms, without scratching the soft side, and getting around the different front and rear arm size. My solution works - but is a bit more fiddly than I'd like. If anyone has an improvement - have a go!
You need to print 3 of the locking pieces for each guard. They lock into place when you slide them over the 2 extended pieces of the guards. 2 down and 1 up like in the picture.
My print time was 1:36 for a pair, so about 3:15h for a full set.
The total kit adds 40g weight to the Mavic Mini. (heavier than the 26g OEM prop guards - so maybe the next version needs to be thinner/lighter.)
Cheers!