Over the last 3 years the FlowZilla has been brewing. The frame and the project itself seemed to flow through time; weeks of cad work, months of prototype testing, searching for the right carbon manufacturer and the quest for sustainable packaging in a new age of environmental awareness.
This is a short story about how this frame got to where it is and where it will go in the future.
The first FlowZilla intended to achieve a few simple goals;
Called the invert, back in 2019 solved the stack issue, but did not have good enough bottom plate rigidity… Can you see why?
This design was also cool as you could invert the arms and centralised the mass in line with the motors for a super balanced frame.
We also cut a 6 inch version which Dave (AscendFPV) Still has, I think.
At this stage the FR7 frame came out and I really liked the split deck format that had, wanting to make something similar to the invert with a split deck, but then use a key plate to lock the arms together.
As I was testing the Invert and starting on a new design with a keyplate the Apex frame launched, basically 80% of what I was working toward was in that frame. So laziness won and I just flew that for a while.
After a year with that frame I decided that the few things I didn't like about the Apex that I really wanted in the FlowZilla had to be done. So I broke out the CAD tools again and went to work.
A New Design
Keeping the split deck design and coupling that with the keyplate - which locks the arms and main body plates together to make encourage impact distribution, splitting the top plate so that you can leave your HD camera mount in place when doing simple stack maintenance/ changes
We wanted a super thin air profile for the main fuselage and arms to reduce wind resistance drag. The rear plate has 20x20 mounting and enough booth to fit the Caddx vista, a full Pro32 and other full size VTX.
We tidied up the square edges on the frame and rounded them to give a cleaner look and remove stress points and finally decided on 3mm body plates because Matty flips and that time Propagnda decapitated the “Lightweight” 1.5mm plates.
This frame doesn't stop here, there is a dead cat version; simply change the front 2 arms and you’re good to go.
The front top plate and cam side plates can be removed and we have special low pro FPV Cam and HD front mounts designed to combined with the Deadcat frame turn it into a filming weapon.
Keep an eye out for bigger versions for mountain surfers among you!
Testing
At this point we were ready for some crash testing, we tested and bashed the heck out of it, schools, parks, Carparks and we even had a couple tested in the rally and drift tracks until we felt we've come up with something that is robust, light and has an epic flight feel.
Easy repairs were a must, the split top plate and simple 2 screw arm change.
We noticed the main body plate started to delaminate at the pressnuts where the arms would fasten so we removed the furthest pressnut and went with the OG locknut. You’d rather replace an arm than the main plate, trust me.
8 months Later, 3 Frame revisions, we destroyed 1 frame in total - well, there was the other one that got run over buuut thats another story.
Big thanks to the pilots that helped us test the frame through the years!!
Dave aka AsendFPV
George aka Inspire U Media
