Fractal Engineering X-Bow Frame Kit

As you already know, I only like to make stuff I wish existed; and this frame is exactly that; it might not be the most robust or easiest frame to assemble or repair, but man does it hauls 🍑.

I would rather get this out of the way immediately, if you’re not confident in your building skills or you’re thinking of going bando bashing with it, this isn’t for you.

However, if you’re not one to shy away from a challenging build, and you want to push your flying to new levels, my guy do I have something for you.

Vertical, pretensioned, interlocked arms.
At the heart of the concept, the arms make the center piece holding everything together.

The vertical arms induce little to no prop obstruction, making the frame exceptionally quiet, efficient and fast.

Try lowering the nose on a juicy flick to engage warp speed as the arms align with the airflow.

This carbon fiber orientation also brings more rigidity to the frame than it has any right to be for 1.5mm thickness.

The pretension comes from tying the the tips with the motor plates, enabling remarkable motor vibration dampening.

This enables running with extremely lean filtering, improving pidloop latency and connectedness.

Lastly the interlocking arms makes for a uniquely stable assembly without the need for numerous hardware and high clamping force.

Meanwhile leaving the center open for electronics, safely nested within the heart of the frame.

Few but mighty printed parts
Quick swap, flexible battery mount
Stretches to size to quickly slide batteries in and out.

Lighter than a velcro strap, latches in place and adapts to any battery size, from 3 to 4S, ~450 to 650Mah.

Or for any other odd size the slots perfectly fit a 12mm velcro strap as well.

In addition, the TPU lipo pad helps keep the lipo from sliding, while offsetting it from the bottom sunk nuts.

Motor spacers
Structural components that help distribute the motor clamping force between both motor plates

Wingman HD Camera mount compatible
The cam pod has the same accessory slots as the Wingman for a HD cam, GPS or other.

All printed files + extras are available for download here to make your own at home

Super efficient, stealthy and long flight time

Enough about how it’s made, how does it fly?

Well you can expect unparalleled performance out of that format.

The combination of super light weight, low prop obstruction and high rigidity make for an explosive cocktail that’ll leave you speechless.

Fly faster, further and longer than you ever have on a 3.5″

See this here footage of an unhinged 3km sortie in Hong Kong

The survival cell
The whole geometry of this frame revolves around the ability to install the electronics within the center area of the arms.

While it does constitutes the major part of the assembly difficulty I mentioned earlier, it also makes for one of its strongest benefits.

To get the sticking point out of the way first, what I meant by hard to build was really just that it will only fit up to 33x33mm boards, and stack up to 12mm height

Which prevents a lot of current whoop AIOs to fit, but still leaves a few excellent options such as the HM CrazyF411 or the TBS Podracer AIO.

And while leaving a fairly tight space to work with, the whole stack actually assembles out in the open to the top plate that can then be then be lowered whole into the cell.

However this all should be no trouble with a little building skills and/or patience 😎

To sum it up

The X-Bow is simply a cutting edge prototype race/freestyle frame made for the most extreme pilots out there.

• If you’re not afraid of a challenging build that will push you to improve your building skills
• If you want to experience a new level of speed and responsiveness in your flights
• If you want a silent and stealthy freestyle rig to rip around town without alerting the whole block
• Whether you’re into juicy, sbangy freestyle flying that could benefit from the bonkers acceleration
• Or you’re a 3 or 3.5″ spec racer that could use the extra top end and low weight in your courses
• Or you’re just a sicko like me that would ride a Koenigsegg to the grocery store
  

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Well then if any of these sound true, this was made for you too.

Build recommendation:

• Motors: 1204 ~5000KV for 3″, 1404 ~3500KV for 3.5″.
  Props: Gemfan 3″ 3028-3 or 3.5″ 3525-3
• AIO: Any 15-20A, 3-4S as long as the OVERALL DIMENSIONS NOT OVER 33x33mm
  See our Happymodel CrazyF411
• Camera: Any 14mm micro cam. See our Caddx Ant
• VTX: Analog: Any nano size VTX; see our TBS Unify Nano Pro32
• HD FPV: HDZero Whoop Lite works great, walksnail should fit as well -untested-
  As long as your stack fits within 33x33mm wide and 12mm tall you should be good to go!
• Battery: The strap should allow you to use about 450 to 550, 3 to 4S Lipos.
• For weights, expect about ~72g for 1404 / 3.5″ and ~62g for 1204 / 3″

Included:

• 1 x Top Plate
• 1x Bottom Plate
• 2 x Cam Pods
• 4 x Arms
• 1 x Adjustable TPU Lipo Strap
• 1 x TPU Lipo Pad
• 4 x PLA Motor Spacers
• 4 x M2 x 6mm silicone grommets (for single board stack spacing, cut to size as needed)
• 2 x M2 x 14mm custom alu standoffs (for cam pod)
• 2 x M2 nylock nuts (for cam pod)
• 6 x M2 x 5mm button hex screw (for cam pod and standoffs)
• 4 x M2 Sunk Nuts (for bottom plate)
• 4 x M2 x 16mm button hex screw (for stack and top/bottom plate)
• 10 x M2 x 10mm button hex screws (for motors)
• 10 x M2 x 8mm (for props)