It's HERE! Dave's Build Log

Hey guys! I’m thrilled to announce I got my kit!

First off, HUGE kudos to @pdwhite. I build hardware products for a living and I could not be more impressed with this kit so far. The quality of the parts is incredible, and even the packaging was great. For a couple guys in a basement/garage, I’m astounded! The community owes you bigtime!

This is going to be a fun build! I’ll post the progress and Feedback anything I learn. WOW. Here we go!

17 Likes

Yay!!!

so great to see first hand photos of someone from the community. Keep 'em coming!

3 Likes

Post a build video! :smile:

1 Like

@pdwhite is already working on one - and I’m feeding my questions into him so he can get those worked into his video.

2 Likes

Looks like an awesome kit! Can’t wait to build it. Keep the photos/videos coming of your process to build it.

1 Like

So I’m doing my best to figure out where all the bits go. It’s a pretty intuitive design. Most things only fit in one place.

Spent a couple hours on it today. Built up 1 arm, the legs and the body.

It’s starting to look like something I might fly :slight_smile:

Tomorrow will be about finishing the arms and starting the wiring!

5 Likes

Oh! Wow wow wee waa! I am excite!

Nice one Dave! It looks a really straight forward build, I’m not sure how close you are to the wiring stage, but are you soldering wires together or crimping? Thanks for showing what you’ve done so far.

wiring starts today :). It will likely be a combination of solders and crimps. Motors and ESCs have great bullet connectors with them, which will be soldered on. The Big battery connector XT150 and XT90 are solder I hope to crimp for the power switch and over time add a bus bar for distribution and bolt/crimp for that. Will include closeups as I do those.

1 Like

Very nice to see the images from Dave’s build log. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Would be very interested in the all up weight when it’s finished. Looks good!

Alrighty, got my first motor spinning!

And suggestion for anyone building, cut up and old Allen key to make a drill bit, it goes WAY faster.

4 Likes

So the frame is all built, and now taken apart again. :). Once I felt good about all the mechanicals, I turned my focus to electrical.

I’m mid way through, but I’ve decied to go with a bus bar setup for power distribution.

It’s essentially aluminum bar stock (decided to go with that vs copper since it’s lighter and easier to get), some copper lugs for battery connections and ring terminals for the wires to the ESCs.

All of the parts were available from Home Depot which was handy :). I’ll do some resistance measurements once it’s complete. Certainly easier to tweak than a big ball of solder wire harness. We’ll see…

2 Likes

Cool. Got to say, my first thought was, ‘how insulated are those bus-bars from the carbon?’ but I’m sure you’ve got that under control.
Keep posting. Enjoying watching your progress

The bus bars are isolated using polycarbonal standoffs. It’s “proof of concept” quality at the moment, but should all function fine. The positive rail will get capped or wrapped so that random metal bits in the field don’t short things out.

Looks clean! Good work.

A few things came to mind: Make sure those ring terminals are up to the current asked of them. and 2) it is unusual to use nylock for an electrical connection. I think it will work, but not convention as the nylon could melt if the connection got hot.

Keep the pics coming.

Yeah, thought about both of those. The rings are designed for the gauge of wire being used by the motor controllers - so I’m hoping someone at the ring terminal factory did the math :slight_smile:

And, yes, nylock nuts are not typically used in electrical applications, but most electrical applications don’t fly :slight_smile: I have lock washers and nuts that I could swap out, but lock nuts are just so much easier. If the connection gets hot we have fundamental issues. I’ll be doing a lot of static load/endurance tests before I actually fly this thing, and will be measuring temp as well of everything.

Dave, were you able to assemble the entire frame and cage without doing any of the wiring? From previous posts and pictures it looks like you did.

So, yeah, I did do a first pass assembly without doing any of the wiring. I wanted to make sure I had all the pieces (which it turns out I didn’t, missing a few screws) and was also eager just to see the whole thing together. I also wanted to see how the hoop fit together, etc.

That being said, once you know what you’re doing, it’s much easier to do all the wiring with the thing apart :slight_smile:

1 Like

Bus bars, and motor wiring complete!

Arms and goosenecks attached. I’ve now got the whole thing assembled and spinning motors. So far things are looking really good.

I’ve come up with a simple/clever way to attach the batteries. I went with the 4 Bonka config, but this would work for others. I’ll post tomorrow!

3 Likes