birdseyeap
Member
Rebuild
I finally got back to my hexcopter last weekend and did a full teardown and rebuild. When I took it apart, the faulty solder joint was clearly the problem. It was where I had soldered two female bullet connectors to the pad along with the ESC wires. This time the wires are soldered directly to the pads along with the ESC wires. No more bullet connectors. I used some rubber bands around the handles of some needle nose pliers and used them to clamp the wires to the board while soldering so it would stay still until the joint cooled.
View attachment 6585
I also noticed that some of the servo/ESC wires had worn where they were exposed to the sharp edges of the bottom plate. So before putting anything on the new bottom plate (top plate too), I sanded off the sharp edges with some 220 sandpaper both inside and out to make them smooth. Here is a picture of the completed inside rebuild.
View attachment 6587View attachment 6586
Another interesting thing was some obvious heat damage to the ESCs. Three of the ESCs had gotten hot enough for the plastic to melt between the ESC and the hex arm to which they were cable tied. The plastic was melted and extruded away by the pressure between the arm and ESC exposing the metal of the ESC. Since this spot was between the ESC and arm it wasn’t actually visible until after removing the ESC.
So I also replaced all of the ESCs and motors with new ones. (By the time I would have bought replacement ESCs, arms, and motors, it was cheeper to buy a whole new F550 kit.) You are right, I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll have the old undamaged ones as spares. I am still waiting on some replacement parts to the camera gimbal, but hope to be back and at least test flying this week. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks again for all your help.
I finally got back to my hexcopter last weekend and did a full teardown and rebuild. When I took it apart, the faulty solder joint was clearly the problem. It was where I had soldered two female bullet connectors to the pad along with the ESC wires. This time the wires are soldered directly to the pads along with the ESC wires. No more bullet connectors. I used some rubber bands around the handles of some needle nose pliers and used them to clamp the wires to the board while soldering so it would stay still until the joint cooled.
View attachment 6585
I also noticed that some of the servo/ESC wires had worn where they were exposed to the sharp edges of the bottom plate. So before putting anything on the new bottom plate (top plate too), I sanded off the sharp edges with some 220 sandpaper both inside and out to make them smooth. Here is a picture of the completed inside rebuild.
View attachment 6587View attachment 6586
Another interesting thing was some obvious heat damage to the ESCs. Three of the ESCs had gotten hot enough for the plastic to melt between the ESC and the hex arm to which they were cable tied. The plastic was melted and extruded away by the pressure between the arm and ESC exposing the metal of the ESC. Since this spot was between the ESC and arm it wasn’t actually visible until after removing the ESC.
So I also replaced all of the ESCs and motors with new ones. (By the time I would have bought replacement ESCs, arms, and motors, it was cheeper to buy a whole new F550 kit.) You are right, I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll have the old undamaged ones as spares. I am still waiting on some replacement parts to the camera gimbal, but hope to be back and at least test flying this week. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks again for all your help.
