Hi all, it's my first post as an Arduopter owner! I just got my 3DR-C in the mail this past week and I have been really impressed with the design and quality of the product. I'm running APM 2.0 with 850 motors. I am completely new to Ardupilot, but I have been building electric RC aircraft for years. The build was going pretty well, but I have been having problems with one of the motors. When I was initially testing the motors at low speeds I noticed that this one motor made a grinding noise and seemed to spin out of sync with the other motors. I did not think too much of it, but when I finally tried a full throttle spin up, this same motor stopped completely after a couple of seconds. I re-calibrated the ESC a couple of times and I tried the motor with the other ESCs which yielded the same result. I also tried the motor connected directly to the receiver. The bullet connector joints looked good so I opened up the motor and found that two strands on the center wire are broken. I believe this is the problem. I tried to solder the wire, but there is not much room to get my iron in there and I believe there is some sort of coating on the wires. I was really hoping for first flight to be tomorrow (Sunday), but I will have to postpone if I can't get this motor up and running. Has anybody experienced this problem and know of any fixes? It is a brand new motor so I am really surprised that it is broken already. I took great care to not bend the leads as I installed them.
Thanks, any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!!
Replies
Jason, thanks for all the good info, I think I will have to replace the motor.
Doug, the damage was not as obvious on my motor. All wires were connected, the broken wires are only noticeable when I took the motor apart.
Did it fail like THIS discussion topic?
-=Doug
Motor wire is covered in lacquer and must be removed with an acid. I think you can also burn it off. The copper must be exposed or you wont get a good solder joint. RCTimer has some of the same motors that you can use as cheap replacements. I find the quality in these cheap Chinese motors is about 80-90% OK, so I order extras.
Jason