Quick battery swap

Sorry – ok got it.
One could also strap it your way and mark the diagonal strap and melt a hole with a pointy soldering iron for the kit spacers to go through it and no printer needed
I dont think a small melted hole in the strap would have any ill effect on the strap. Ya, rethinking, dont think you could route the strap and get the space support at the same time, the rear screw being the hardest as it gets covered - leave the front unscrewed
Cheers

I wouldn’t want a hole in my strap. Plus you wouldn’t be able to access the bolt head. The 3D print works well.

Lots of folks dont have a printer – you are most likely correct about the strap – but worst case then motor falls off – straps to wing ok :sweat_smile:

Paul, your spacer at your harness connection is a great idea. I was looking at that specific issue to see if I needed to add another standoff but a 3D printed spacer will fit perfectly and is a much easier approach.

The battery rails and connectors look like that would work really well. I was looking at the aluminum option but your printed solution looks nice. Since you have shortened your wires, have you seen any performance difference?

Can you post the STL files for the spacer, rails and XT150 connector holders?

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Spacer looks brilliant.

On the track, are you at all worried about the 3D print pulling apart under load? Are there any off the shelf rails we could use to accomplish the same thing?

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I printed all the pieces of the track on end so that the layer lines wouldn’t weaken the print in a bad direction. Also, I used PETG which is stronger than PLA and adheres to itself really well making it almost not matter about print orientation. It would require a pretty big break on both rails to lose the batteries. A 6 pound battery is only 3 pounds on each rail. The rivet locations are optimized to the most critical points.

The short answer is: no I’m not worried.

If you scroll up I posted some aluminum rails that I found on Amazon. They are a little bigger and heavier and cost more since I already have a printer.

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Looks great

Standing up? – did the print use a lot of support material – how long to print everything with sliders?
Cheers

Yes, standing on end. At first I used a brim but PETG sticks really good to the print bed so I stopped even using that. I think it was about 30 hrs worth of printing total. These 4 sliders took 5.5 hrs:

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Awesome. Step files for both the strap spacer and rails would be awesome. Great idea!

The short answer is no. Over the course of almost a year I have shortened my wires several times. The first time was when I cut the battery leads in half which I mainly did to keep the wires out of the props. I rewired the whole machine when I converted to 2 switches. Lastly, I took a few more inches off when I created the new connector holders. I’ve never noticed a performance change with any of these but the shorter the wires get the less induction there will be which can damage the ESCs over time. I’ve also never had any issues with the ESCs. We have yet to see anyone report on flying with more than 4 batteries with extended wires. Will they have issues with induction if they don’t add capacitors? Probably not right away but perhaps over time… we shall see.

I’ll upload the .stl files soon

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Follow this link to find my files:

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The rail attachment system is brilliant!

Did you post those files? Maybe I didn’t see that

I’d love to make a second set of rails to attach another 4 batteries to the stand.

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Follow the link above to my thread to find the files for everything that was discussed in this thread.

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Would be useful for “Quick Battery Jettison” as well, in my opinion.
Actually, this is an exceptionally important safety feature that should be urgently discussed. Who of the pilots would like to have a burning back airborne? In such case, even the reserve cute won’t help much. There have to be a way to jettison the battery.

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