Mikrokopter Fan solution for BL-Ctrl 2.0 ?

[ovdt]

Hello,

I've just built my new ship CineStar 6 with MK electronics. It flies perfectly, I'll post some details on this craft soon. It runs Copter Control for camera stabilization.

Here in Turkey, the weather is getting too hot, it's over 33 celcius right now and under the sun, the motors get hot without starting them. No need to mention, CineStar has no cover for protecting the electronics from direct sun light. The BL Ctrls also get hot because of the direct sun light. (The heatsinks are black and emitting heat). And I have installed heatsinks both sides of BL Ctrl. If it's slightly windy or if I cruise with the copter, heat is no problem. But when hovering under no windy conditions, BL Ctrls have serious heat problems, they easily climb to 100 celcius degrees even heatsinks are installed.

I've put the NaviCtrl and GPS on the arm. And trying to place a fan to CineStar battery tray.

I know that brushless fans generate magnetic field which disturbs the compass functions. But does it generate more magnetic field than a brushless motor that we use? In this setup, I'm using Tiger MT2820 KV830 motors.

Does anyone had a experience with a fan installation? I made sure the fan is far enough from the NaviCtrl and GPS.

View attachment 4724

 

[alexoki]

I am interested to see how you progress with the fan idea. I have thought about something similar as I live in the South of Spain and needless to say, its hot! Think I have just sorted my magnetic field issues so introducing another component which could emit EMI would be a pain.

 

[jes1111]

I haven't tried a fan myself, but I very much doubt that it will create enough airflow to make a significant difference. From your pic it looks like the ESCs are arranged in a circle around the core, so you could make an aluminium heatsink that projects out into free air - the more surface area the better - something like the attached image. Also, as with any heatsink, it is vital to ensure a good thermal connection between the aluminium and the FETs: clean the tops of the FETs with Isopropyl Alcohol and scrub the aluminium surface with fine steel wool, then use thermal tape or thermal adhesive to "bond" the ESC to the plate. Simple mechanical contact (without any thermal compound) is basically a waste of time and may actually produce worse results than no heat sink at all, since air is a very efficient insulator.

I'm interested in your CC gimbal control. Have you posted details anywhere about that setup?

 

[ovdt]

Thanks Jes for the informative post, again

I was an overclocker in the past, so I agree with your thermal notes. The reason I'm trying to implement a fan is simple: When I cruise around instead of hovering, the BL Ctrls stay warm, not hot. When I hover in summer time, it just gets too hot in seconds.

Today I made some flights with the fan attached. As I mentioned before, I have heatsinks installed on both sides of Bl Ctrl. The fan is working with 12V and it's quite powerful, don't look at the size. Under direct sun, the weather was 35 degrees today. And the BL Ctrls were around 50-65 degrees.

It seems to work, PH and AH also seems to work flawlessly.

Edit: I'll open a topic about CC and Camera Stabilization. It has some problems but it does the job for tilt axis better than roll axis.

 

[jes1111]

Glad the fan's doing the job. Similar problems here in Portugal - for my normal photography I have one of those small pushchair umbrellas that clips onto the tripod to shade the camera. Why do they always make "pro" gear black?

Still impossible to get hold of, but the new CC3D has better/newer sensors than the original CC, so performance as a gimbal controller may be improved. But the big leap will come with a planned add-on for the upcoming OpenPilot Revolution board. No details available yet, but the idea is to offer a plug-in "hyper-IMU" with the super-sensitive gyros, etc. that are needed for high-grade gimbal control. Watch this space!