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Engineering Examples · Robotics & UAS hardware

Selling the vibration report, not a promise

Anyone can print a soft-mount. We compute its isolation curve with modal FEA, cross-check the eigensolve against a static solve, and tune it to your motor band.

The result at a glance

1.77×
governing rocking mode below the 150 Hz floor (80 g reference payload)
3.5%
modal ↔ static cross-check agreement
53%
isolation on the governing axis at the 150 Hz floor (80 g reference)
6 modes
rigid-body map computed per payload

Problem → built result

What we solved

A flight controller's gyro only gives clean data if it doesn't feel the motors. So drone builders bolt the board to a printed 'soft-mount' and hope. The trouble is that a soft-mount only isolates frequencies above its own suspension resonance — and if that resonance happens to land on the motor band, the mount amplifies the very vibration it was meant to kil…

What we built

Print the isolator as one TPU piece: a rigid base that bolts to the drone, four slender compliant legs that act as the springs, and a platform that carries the board. Then characterize it the way a vibration engineer would — by computing its modes, not guessing.

Assembly render — printed TPU soft-mount, the legs are the springs

How we proved it

The engineering behind the result.

Modal FEA maps the suspension

A CalculiX eigenfrequency analysis on the mounted payload returns the six rigid-body modes: lateral sway and yaw lowest, then vertical bounce, and the stiffest — rocking — last. That map is the design.…

Two independent methods, cross-checked

An eigensolve is only as good as its mass and stiffness matrices, so we validate it. A separate static solve pushes the payload laterally, measures the stiffness, and hand-calculates the suspension frequency — it lands within 3.5% of the modal first mode.…

Tuned to your band, then measured

From the validated modes we publish the transmissibility curve — predicted isolation at every frequency (53% on the governing rocking axis at the 150 Hz floor for the 80 g reference payload, 92% on bounce and 100% on sway — every axis published, not just the one that flatters the…

Computed transmissibility — isolation at every frequency, modes from the FEA

Delivered result

Evidence a buyer can use.

A printed mount that ships with its isolation curve computed, its analysis cross-checked, and — when you want it — a measured vibration report against your own aircraft. Not 'it's squishy, it should help,' but a number you can trust and a method behind it.

Application notes

A 4-post mount's stiffest mode is rocking (85 Hz at the 80 g reference point), and it is the binding constraint: for a motor fundamental that sits near it we re-tune leg stiffness or payload to move it out, rather than pretend it isn't there.…

Quote

Configure the FC / Jetson Vibration Mount.

Photos, a drawing, or dimensions. We’ll quote the job if we can take it.