Scrapping a Blade 350 QX3

[insignia100]

Hey guys, I'm hoping to get some advice. I purchased a Blade 350 QX3 just over a year ago, and although I only have maybe an hour's worth of flight time, I discovered the other day that apparently the main control board is bad (it won't detect any of the ESCs). A new control board from Horizon Hobby costs $160 (!!!), so I've been thinking that, rather than replace the control board, I could take whatever parts I can (which may only be the motors) and transplant them over to a Flite Test frame.

I'm pretty new to the quad scene and so I'm not entirely sure how proprietary the Blade's ESCs are. I also don't really know if it would really even be worth trying to salvage any parts from this quad.

Tell me your thoughts. Move parts over? Start from scratch with a Flite Test kit? Suck it up and buy another main control board that will probably fail after a few hours of flight? Let me know!

 

[rockyboy]

Absolutely worth the fun/experience of salvaging parts to make something new! I didn't turn up anything on a quick search about how the Blade ESC's work, but I would suspect they are compatible with a standard control signal - Blade doesn't seem to brag about them being some proprietary new form of sliced bread, so they are probably built using common practices. As a quick/cheap way to see what kind of challenges you'll have doing this, I'd recommend just trying to connect one of the esc/motor's to a standard receiver's throttle channel and see if it'll spin. If so, they should work with a standard flight controller no problem.

 

[insignia100]

Thanks for the reply! I did end up ordering an Electrohub quadcopter kit with all the necessary components for a complete build. That will give me a chance to test the Blade ESCs. If it works, I'll probably end up buying a second kit to install the Blade components on.

The ESCs do look a bit different from other ESCs from what I recall. I'll probably take the Blade apart again this evening to strip the parts and examine things a little more closely (didn't want to disturb anything incase I sent it in for warranty repair). I'll take some photos and post some pictures sometime this weekend.