Seed Spreader Design Report

A 3D printed drone seed spreader attachment

28th March 2018

Problem Definition
Spreading seed using a drone has numerous advantages. It accelerates the process and is also non-intrusive to
the terrain; thus allowing easy access to all areas. However, mass is an extremely import design parameter as a
drone can only carry a certain payload.

Design Description

Overview
A 3D-printable seed spreading attachment has been designed and optimised using Solid Edge. It is designed to
hold approx. 2 kg of seed.

Drone attachment
Main container

Spinner assembly

Seed is dispersed through three openings in the bottom of the main container. A closer plate is printed in-situ
to allow for the openings to be closed off when required.

Main container
internal surface

Closer plate

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The seed is then fed into the spinner assembly. The spinner assembly is attached using an M12x 65 mm bolt.
A 6003 deep-grove ball bearing is used to give smooth operation of the assembly. This bolted connection and
the bearing are the only components of this design which are not 3D printed.

Main container
Attachment support

Cup
Cup arm

M12 bolt
Spinner assembly

Bearing

The spinner assembly works on an anemometer principle. In the presence of air flow, the cups have a larger
coefficient of drag on the hollow surface as opposed to the elliptical rear, this in turn creates a torque on the
central shaft which causes it to rotate. This rotation then spreads the seed.
The main advantage of this design is that it does not require the extra hardware associated with using a motor
to spread the seed. This reduces the weight, complexity and cost of this device.

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Mass reduction
As mentioned previously, mass reduction is critical in designing drone attachments. The shape of the cup
support arms and the attachment supports has been optimised to reduce mass to a feasible level. This has been
accomplished using generative design in ST10. The mass of each cup arm has been reduced from 34g to 7g.
The mass of the attachment support has been reduced from 160g to 95g. Thus an overall weight saving of
146g has been achieved. The overall design has a mass of approx. 600g, not including the bolt or bearing.
Therefore, topology optimisation has reduced the overall weight by over 20%. This means that the drone will
be able to fly for a substantially longer period of time.

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Note: As an academic version of ST10 was used in this study, the optimised topology could not be analysed
further by completing a stress analysis. To ensure the chosen design will not fail, the design
optimisation study was completed at a very high quality level and a factor of safety of 3, using ABS as
the printed material.
The optimised sections were also unable to be exported to step files, or rendered in Keyshot, hence why
they do not appear in those files.

Conclusion
The above design represents an attractive solution to seed spreading using a drone. The main advantage of this
design is that it doesn’t not require any extra components such as motors, to operate. Topology optimisation
has also been used to reduce the overall mass by 20%.