Earlier this year I finally quit playing World of Warcraft. By the 4th of July, I was going out of my mind with boredom, so I had lots of free time to stumble across the world of drones, UAVs, and of course multi-rotors. In my quest for more information, I Google'd and YouTube'd everything I could find on the topic, which is how I came across RC Model Reviews, Experimental Airlines, and FliteTest.
Following is my limited experiences so far with my Rotor Bones Quadcopter. Originally I had intended to go all out with build videos uploaded to YouTube and tons of build photos, but by the time I was ready to start putting everything together, I was two excited to wait any longer.
The quadcopter kit included the Anycopter Hub, two 13-370 Straight Motor Mounts (4x total), four 1/2 inch wood booms, and the screws needed to assemble everything.
The first thing I did, after empting out everything making a mess, was to punch out and build my four engine mounts, that also formed some really nice looking landing struts. This required punching out the laser cut (?) pieces for the legs as well as the negative spaces used to lighten the struts. Kind of a pain, literally, but I found what worked best was to punch out a larger piece and then use it to punch out the smaller remaining cuts.
An exploded diagram on the rear of the packaging insert might have been nice, but the design was simple enough to put together. In the online build videos, I noticed the engine mounts were almost always mounted on top of the wood boom, though I was happy to discover I could reverse the mount and put it below the boom. However, if this is your first multi-rotor, you might want to place the engine on top, at least until you are comfortable flying. Attaching the landing struts to the engine mount does require a firm hand and at times I was worried I would snap something, but I did get all four legs together without incident.
Using the engine mounts and landing strut assemblies to mark the ends of the four booms, and the spacer provided with the Anycopter Hub, I marked all four booms and headed to my parents house to borrow a drill press, for straighter holes. Although my holes were "straight", they also ended up being slightly off-center, so using the press, for me at least, was mostly a waste of time, I would have done almost as well with a low-speed drill.
As for the size of my drill bit, I wasn't sure what to use, and at the time I couldn't recall Chad mentioning it in his build video. So after measuring the M3 screws, I went with a 7/64 inch bit, which gave me a nice secure fit. Later I learned that a 1/8 inch bit was used in Chad's builds, which I think was the better choice, providing a little more slop. When drilling my booms though, I end up "splintering" the wood. The holes would eventually be covered by the engine mount and hub kit, so while annoying, I don't believe this was an issue.
Once I was home from drilling my off-center holes, I mounted my motors onto the 13-370 straight motor mounts and then mounted the motor mounts to the wood booms. NOT RECOMMENDED. This made things really ackward when trying to mount the booms to the Anyrotor Hub, which was further exasperated when trying to mount the battery plate.
Instead, I would recommend first attaching the wood booms to the hub, waiting until all four hubs are attached before tightening up the screws and nuts. It is also a good idea to make some small marks on the hub, as Chad suggested in the build videos. I thought it would be simple enough to manage, but I still twisted the top and bottom plates once or twice, requiring me to undo everything and start over (which was annoying with my motors weighing down the ends of the booms).
Next I threaded the velco straps provided with the Anyrotor Hub through the battery tray. I wasn't thrilled with the battery plate mounted directly to the bottom plate of the hub, so I instead used some nylon 6 mm spacers with the two M3 screws to create a small gap under the bottom plate, which also eliminated the need for me to trim the bottom of the screws and provided an alternate route for running my battery connectors. However, with only two screws holding the battery plate, this setup proved a little too wobbly, so I eventually inserted a few more 6 mm spacers in the holes to the left and right of the mounting holes on the battery plate.
The following stage of my build required soldering the ESCs. Growing up in a jewelry store, I did know a little about gold soldering with a torch, though more often then not I melted the shank. I also was familiar with applying solder to jump rings to secure clasps and charms. But I had never soldered any electronics before, and was concerned with messing up. Fortunately the process was rather simple and applying the heat shrink on the ends of the bullet connectors was actually fun. For those ordering connectors, I used 3 female ends per ESC to connect to the motor (12 total) and 2 male ends per ESC to connect to the battery adapter. I did rely on a pre-made battery harness for the ESC though, I am still learning to solder after all.
Finally I attached the completed ESCs to the wood booms with velcro, using zip ties on either side to manage the wires. The battery harness was connected to the ESCs, and the BECs were wrapped through the hub, up into an upside down food container I was using to protect my receiver and KK2.0 board, both mounted on foam pads with more strips of velcro, so they could be moved as needed.
First, to avoid splintering the booms, drill them on top of a scrap piece of wood. As for the drill bit size, it is okay to go with a larger bit, as Chad was using a 9/64th bit for the Knuckle H-Quad. I would assume the additional slop helps with placement of the holes in the boom.
Second, while you can mount the motor lower as I did, the drawback is increased vibration, something I would have never considered.
Log In to reply