Replies to This Discussion

AdminPermalink Reply by John C. on January 18, 2011 at 10:41pm

I would *immediately* remove the bullet connectors and hard-solder the ESC to motor connections.

 

The weight didn't cause that.  You may need to trim on the Tx if it's not balanced weight, and don't descend too fast, but I have not had a single dropout like that in probably 4 hours of total flight time with and without a camera on front.  *AFTER* I hard-soldered those connectors.

 

And I've got a seriously crappy camera mount.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Taylor Cox on January 18, 2011 at 10:52pm

I completely agree with John. I had random motor drop outs when I had the bullet connectors. After I soldered the ESC's to the motors directly, I have not had one single glitch.

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Permalink Reply by Gunnar Forsgren mobimation.com on February 21, 2011 at 4:39am

I realised this today also.

When hovering the copter could suddenly make quick sideways moves and I have heard "clicks" from the motors which probably comes from irregular contact. When I did a complete ESC recalibrate today I noticed one ESC ran very irregularly and found one bullet connector had no contact. Touching it ever so slightly made contact. So, I will solder ESCs to motors as well now. I think it´s that freely rotating design of the bullet part that causes this. The idea seems to be that when the plug is pressed into the mating connector the bullet should lock up solid. But the design is a failure. 

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Permalink Reply by estebanflyer on March 7, 2012 at 2:06pm

Hi Taylor, I'm having some serious glitches on my quad, but my bullet connectors don't turn when i try to, would you still solder them?

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Permalink Reply by Taylor Cox on March 7, 2012 at 2:07pm

Yes.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on January 19, 2011 at 8:16am

John,

Your camera mount --- I was worried about shifting the balance that much on the quad. Are you counterbalancing with the battery? or are you just trimming on the remote?

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Permalink Reply by Choppy on January 19, 2011 at 2:55am

I just had the same frigging thing happen! I did not resolder a new motor's bullet connectors. Almost all of the bullet connectors that I received from Fah Pah have been supplied with physically solid solder joints but fail after some time. They must be done with a "cold" iron and maybe lead free crap.

If I can get mine going again, it will be hard wired as John suggests. There is no redundancy with quads. I saw a video with a hexacopter and they seem to still fly with a motor outage. Quadcopter 0, ground 1.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on January 19, 2011 at 8:08am

Thanks for the ideas, I will cut the connectors out this weekend and solder them up. I will post back with the results.

 

 

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Gary Mortimer on January 19, 2011 at 1:34pm

Don't cut too much out of the motor side, the wires from the connectors to the motor form part of the windings I believe.

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Permalink Reply by Choppy on January 19, 2011 at 2:20pm

Gary is right. The motors that I received in the kit had normal copper extention wires the length of the arms attached. You can treat those as normal wire. The  short wires comming directly out of the motors for about 3 cm to the heat shrink are "mag" wire which each strand is covered in a varnish. I think its 4 strands per connector. If you break a strand, you effectively cut out a entire segment of the motor and you can get varying effects from a clicking noise or the motor just chatteres back and forth till the motor smokes or esc catches on fire. Sometimes the manufacturer has not removed the varnish (or one of your mates have cut the bullet connector off instead of desoldering it). In this case, desolder as much as you can, seperate each strand and scrape off the varnish and try again. Great activity for rainy days....if you're into that sort of thing.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on January 23, 2011 at 2:29pm

Just an update. I cut out the bullet connectors and soldered the wires this weekend. The quad flew flawless. I attached. An image showing the issue with one connector. Looks like a cold solder joint. Thank you all for the support.

Attachments:

• 2011-01-22_14-21-43_507.jpg, 792 KB

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JDronesPermalink Reply by Jani Hirvinen on February 21, 2011 at 7:57am

Yes it seems that there has been a lot of issues with those soldered bullets. They will be removed from next motors/esc's. Well not totally removed to placed in accessory bags. That way people who want to solder them can do it. Our factories were already informed this issue and their latest ESCs were a lot better.

We are constantly looking new and better bullets that we could use. Or other methods how to connect ESC and Motors easily.

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