Cutting F550 base plate?

[StuR]

I'm tinkering with modifying my F550 into Y6 and i'm thinking about cutting the base plate. Is this possible? and if so is there anything i should/should not do? Im guessing it acts as a PDB? I can see that some of the board is like a printed circuit board under the black coating for the positive and the remainder of the board for neutral. So I should avoid cutting into the printed parts? and shorting.

Any advise would be appreciated. I have this board spare so I'm keen to modify it to take a vac formed shell i'm designing.

Cheers.

 

[T J Gilbert]

I think you could carefully trim the plate as shown.
The only traces that you would cut through would be the unused ESC solder pads.
You will have exposed + & - traces at the edge of your plate, but you could then take a sharp knife and cut through them a few mm inboard.
Paint with silicone or liquid electrical tape, and the shorting risk should be gone.
Please excuse the crude photo painting...
View attachment 16732
Be aware that cutting the G10 material that the plate is made of requires carbide tools and respiration protection.
The exposed copper trace that will be at the edge of the cut can be dressed up with sand paper.
As I mentioned above, a sharp knife will cut through the copper trace.
And, this would qualify as an advanced effort for a hobbyist.
If you are new to this, you might want to reconsider...

 

[StuR]

Thanks T J. I was thinking it would be a procedure something like that, but was a bit unsure. I'm fairly new to multirotors but I'm fairly good at the building... It's just the numbers side of things that confuses me !! I've got a mould for a vac formed body for the 550 y6 that I want to mount. Ideally my 550 plates will end up looking like your image with maybe some nylon standoffs for strength when the old arms where. Cheers.

 

[JoeBob]

Have you thought about re-purposing the arm mounting tabs on the upper plate?
You'll need somewhere to hang a camera, a Vtx, and mount a GPS.