| Size | Length | Type | Quantity |
|---|---|---|---|
| M3 | 4 | Grub Screw | 1 |
| M3 | 8 | Button Head | 3 |
| M3 | 8 | Cap Head | 12 |
| M3 | 12 | Cap Head | 10 |
| M3 | 16 | Button Head | 4 |
| M3 | 16 | Cap Head | 54 |
| M3 | 25 | Cap Head | 15 |
| M3 | 25 | Hex Head | 2 |
| M4 | 35 | Button Head | 1 |
3D Create & Print Issue 47 – Hood limit switch
Just a little tip for anyone else that had trouble with the screw provided with this issue as they seem to be made out of the softest metal in the world.
I drilled out the holes on the limit switch to 3mm which is easy to do as they are 2.5mm already.
This then allowed the use of some 3mm machine screws I had on hand with 3mm nuts, luckily the holes in the frame are already big enough so no further modification needed.
Mini H Quad – FPV
Mini H Quad – New FC
So my H Quad just got a new flight controller, a CC3D board from banggood
I de-soldered the headers on the rx and the CC3D board and changed them for the right angles ones you can see.
De-soldering these was a complete pain but the method I came upon was this:
You’ll need a decent pair of mini side cutters such as these
You’ll also need to fix the pcb down so it doesn’t move about.
Step 1: Cut the pins in half to reduce the thermal mass.
Step 2: Try and work your cutters between the black plastic portion to separate the pins in to individual parts, this will make it easier later.
Step 3: Cut the solder pads as close to the pcb as you can.
Step 4: Apply some flux to the bottom connections and use solder wick to remove as much solder as possible.
Step 5: Now take a sewing pin or a single header pin held between the jaws of some pliers and using your soldering iron heat the pin in the pliers and the pad in order to push the pin you’re trying to remove out.
Next time I do this procedure I’ll try and take some pictures to illustrate better.
Then is was a case of running the openpilot s/w and configuring the airframe and a quick flight to verify it.
Monday morning hard drive woes
What a start to Monday.
Last week we had a drive fail in a disk array, no problem slap in the spare from the shelf and we’re good to go screwed damn drive gave error and was no good, ok box has a hot spare in it, hmm that’s showing as unconfigured bad lalalalalala
Spent Thursday afternoon and all day Friday going back and forth with IBM support and finally on Friday afternoon they agree to send out 3 disks.
Get to work this morning and the disks had already been delivered so by half 9 both bad disks in the array were changed, cold spare on the shelf and faulty drives at the gatehouse to be picked up tomorrow.
Then I noticed that the Thecus NAS is screaming at me with red lights and that has a failed disk in it too 🙁 coupled with the imminent death of my laptop hard drive last week and the non functioning replacement I’m going back to bed.
Mini H Quad – Update 1
I’ve just replaced the nasty round red aluminium standoff’s with some shorter black hex ones.
Mini H Quad – She flies
Last few little bits were done this morning and first test flight not so good as she wanted to flip over.
You can probably guess the cause if I tell you it wasn’t props, yes that’s correct I’d connected my motors up wrong well I had basically reversed the connector so 2, 3 & 4 were swapped.
After this issue had been sorted she took to the sky and although she needs some trimming and PID adjustment she fly’s ok.
Final flying weight with a 1500mah battery is 444g
Video coming soon.
Mini H Quad – Build log 5
Here she is
Not quite finished as I still need to terminate the connection loom into a connector and also hook up the receiver to the flight controller although this is easy enough as I already have that cable ready made.
Mini H Quad – Build log 4
Bottom plate is now fully wired.
Each arm is connected with 2 short screw and 2 long ones, the short ones go through one 5mm spacer and the long ones point upwards with a 5mm on the bottom and another on the top with an m3 nut to hold them in place.
This means that the bottom plate is a sub assembly and can be taken off the quad to be worked on if needs be.
At the front is a small 6 way black connector and there is a small plug in wire harness to connect to the flight controller on the 2nd plate.
Just waiting for some more 5mm spacers to finish of the last arm and then the bottom can be mated to the top and the flight controller wired before first testing.
Mini H Quad – Build log 3
A few bits and pieces done today on the quad but I’m running out of bits I can do until my micro power distribution board and other bits and pieces including some liquid electrical tape.
I’ve removed the motor connection wires from 2 of the ESC’s and shortened the motor wires and soldered these direct to the ESC pads, I then tested which way this combination of wires made the motors turn by connecting the signal lead up to channel 3, throttle, on my 6 channel flysky receiver.
Both ESC’s have been wired up the same so that’s the 2 anti colockwise ones done and after I tested them I then removed the gnd and positive leads from the servo connector and de-soldered them from the PCB to save a bit of weight and make the wiring tidier.