Hey all,
I'm in the process of assembling a 3d robotics hexacopter from a kit, and in the directions, it gives me these steps:
1. Solder all bullet connectors to the motors and ESC. Male connectors go on the
motors and female on the ESC.
2. Slide a piece of shrink tubing over the bullet connectors and apply heat to shrink.
3. Slide two pieces of shrink tubing on the red & black wires on the ESC.
4. Solder male Deans or your preferred connector to the red & black wires on the ESC.
5. Pull the shrink tubing over the exposed connector leads and shrink it.
This is confusing though, since the ESCs and motors that came with the kit already seem to have the bullet connectors soldered on and the shrink tubing attached. In fact, it doesn't seem like there are any bullet connectors or shrink tubing included with the kit! The ESCs and the motors attach together just fine.. is there anything else I need to do?
thanks
Replies
You will get there wolfgang, we all started somewhere, luckily i happened to have some shrink tube lying around from my PC building days.
The reason it is recommended to shrink tube the bullet connectors (once you have soldered the plugs on and plugged them in, is that bullets are notoriously unreliable and come apart on the ground or in flight. The shrink tube stops this happening.
Heatshink is sort of considered as one of the 'stock' components of most electrical builds, just like solder, flux, cable ties etc. It may be that your kit does not come with any. You can get it at any electronics store though and its very cheap.
Just make sure all your motors are spinning the correct way before you heatshrink or you will be unpicking two of the wires on each motor that's going the wrong way and doing them again (this btw is how you change the motor direction, if you haven't got that far yet.)
In the past they probably came with bare wires and required soldering. If the connectors are already there then move on to the next steps.