Well, as some of you may have already seen Twitchity and Cranial teamed up to surprise me for Christmas with one of Twitchitys Hex frames and PDB. To say I'm blown away by this gift is a massive understatement. I feel truly unworthy of this amazing frame!
So...the least I can to do to repay them is of course to provide some feedback and document it as I have my other builds!
Since I wasn't expecting this I don't yet have any plans on how I'm going to build it out...but more on that in a moment. First let's take a look at this frame.
I didn't do any "unboxing" photos since I didn't know what I was unboxing
But the frame came very securely packed as everything else Twitchity has sent me always arrives. Pieces were wrapped individually or in pairs and the wrapped packages were taped together to keep it all from bouncing around in shipment - top notch!
First thing I did was lay it all out to see just what I had received:
I noticed that Twitchity has upgraded the hardware from stainless to aluminum since he posted about the CF edition of this frame.
The thicknesses of some of the parts have been revised since that post and the matte finish CF intrigued me enough I had to bust out the calipers and take a few measurements.
Bottom Frame: 1.5mm (varied from 1.27 to 1.35 depending on where I measured it but I'm guessing it's sold as 1.5mm sheet)
Top Frame: 1.5mm (varied from 1.30 to 1.44 - I won't actually be using this piece due to the PDB replacing it.)
Cage Plate: 1mm (varied from 0.80 to 0.94)
Mobius Mount: 1mm (pretty consistently 0.84)
Board Cam mount: 1.5mm (pretty consistently 1.35)
Board Cam mount elimination plate: 1.5mm (I assume that's what this is intended for. It came in at 1.43 consistently)
Arms: 4mm (Most very consistent at 3.85 though one came in at 3.70)
Now keep in mind my calipers are $10 cheapies from harbor freight so don't take these as absolute measurements. Overall though the consistency of the CF is WAY better than the G10/CF hybrid material used in my emax FPV 250 frame which varied far more across pieces and much more from piece to piece.
My past experience with CF frames is somewhat limited. I helped my friend build his warp but he had already done all the finishing on the CF as recommended by Soma - though he did have some spare arms I got to feel to see what it was like as shipped. I also have the emax FPV 250 I already mentioned which is a G10/CF hybrid material where the bulk of it is G10 with thin CF laminates over the top.
The finish on this out of the package blows either of them away. The CF on the warp is fantastic but it does require finishing as the edges are almost razor sharp (I actually tried to shave a few hairs on my arm with one of the arms just for giggles - which is how I know that they're only almost razor sharp) The hybrid material used on the emax frame left my hands raw and itchy after handling it and even wearing gloves while finishing it my hands got tore up from the sharp edges.
Twitch says his only trick on this stuff is to rub it on his jeans after cutting it with a diamond bit in his CNC. So I'm guessing it's something about this particular CF and his CNC setup that results in such remarkable out of the box finish. Or he's got some magical jeans...but I'm betting it's his CNC setup and the material I'm still going to give this a quick once over in the sink with some 400 or 600 grit sandpaper - but you could probably get away with skipping it if you were careful to avoid edges when routing wires. I love the smooth edge CF gets when properly finished though and don't want to worry about any wires getting scraped so I'll spend a half hour to an hour cleaning things up.
The CF itself is very unique in appearance and is hard to capture in an image or describe. It's not really matte, but it's not quite semi-gloss:
Under magnification the weave looks beautiful, and a quick check with my multimeter confirmed that it is indeed conductive across the cut edges. However I had a VERY hard time getting a reading across the faces. It took some serious scraping to a reading - far more than it took with the warp CF or the emax hybrid material. So whatever it is the manufacturer does to give it the matte appearance seems to insulate it quite well. Since the cut edges are still conductive though I'd still suggest all the usual CF precautions.
It was all I could do to put off trying to assemble it...but the mail came midday an I had a lot of work for my job to finish. Finally Friday evening on my wife's lunch break I was able to steal enough time to just barely pull off a quick test assembly:
Everything went together perfect first try. The tolerances are tight and there's no slop...but there's no interference either. On the warp a few screws were kind of tight and difficult to get in and the emax a few things seemed just slightly off but pulled together when assembled. This is remarkably accurate machining for some guy in his garage!
I did run into a minor issue during assembly trying to keep all 18 of those screws in! A bit of painters tape on them held them in place. But if Twitchity does a V4 I'd love to see him do something more like the emax frame where the cage mounts to the top plate and there are holes in the bottom plate to access the screws for the cage. That setup makes it possible to run "naked" without the cage and makes assembly much easier. At a minimum I'd suggest adding holes at the end of the battery strap slots so the FC mount screws are accessible...mainly because I'd like to be able to snug them up from time to time after having the FC come loose on my emax
I didn't take time to weight individual pieces, when I take it apart for actual assembly I'll do so if there's interest. According to Twitchity's thread the original CF prototype came in at 246g with the thicker plates and SS hardware. So it seems he's shaved 40g off of this frame with the changes. That doesn't sound like a lot, but to put it in perspective my mobius weights in at 39g - so he's basically shaved off the weight of a mobius so this frame with mobius should weight about the same as the original without. Not bad and even without fully tightening up the nuts this frame is SOLID and I have no doubts it will take me some serious effort to find any weaknesses in it
My only major concern is the bobbins for the mobius mount. I'm not convinced they'll really be beneficial. Given the light weight of the Mobius they seem too stiff to really give any benefit. Even on my emax with really soft ball style silicone dampeners I don't see much if any benefit from them. With or without I seem to get the same minimal jello. So I can't really see these stiffer bobbins giving much benefit. My other concern is that in crashes with the emax I almost always knock the mobius mount loose - which helps absorb some of the impact the mobius experiences. On here with the bobbins mounted on studs I won't have to worry as much about loosing the mobius - but I am a bit more concerned about damaging it in a crash. Drilling for ball dampeners will be tricky since the holes will have to be recentered - and I don't have a drill press anymore, so I won't be making that change anytime too soon.
Overall I'm blown away by this frame. It's easily on a par with the warp as far as quality and I can't wait to get some gear on it and get it in the air. Which means I need to make some decisions about what to put on it!
My first choice is Cobra 2204's with KISS esc's - like Cranial set the original Twitchity Hex up with. I'm just not sure I can swing it with my budget. I could pull the KISS's cranial sent me off my Twitchity quad and with the two spares he sent I'd have enough for this. I just kind of hate to pull them off of there since they finally solved the issues I had with that quad.
I've been very happy with the emax ESC's on the emax FPV 250 and they're also one of the lowest cost ESC's I'd consider. They come with a modified version of blheli on them...but for this I'd want to flash the latest blheli and use regen which their modified version doesn't include. And since they're silabs chips flashing them is a bit different than what I've done before and they can't be modified through the signal wire after flashing due to memory limits on the silabs chips.
The ZTW Spider ESC's I've heard a lot of good things about lately. They're almost as small as the KISS and use AVR chips so flashing them and being able to program through the signal wire is the same as on my BS and F20 ESC's. They don't have BEC's on them unlike the emax esc's...but I already have a spare pololu regulator on hand and the PDB is setup for that so no BEC isn't a big deal. The ZTW's are also about the same price (actually a little bit cheaper from most sources - about $4 less for 6 esc's which about covers the cost of a pololu!) as the emax so they really appeal to my budget.
What I will probably do is get a set of ZTW's for the quad and devote all 6 of my KISS to this hex. Then in a few months when I can save up the money get more KISS for the quad - unless the ZTW's with BLheli really blow me away
So that leaves a question of motors. I REALLY want to run 2204's on here. I loved the SunnySky's on my friends warp, but I've heard so many great things about the Cobras I'd really like to give them a try. And most reputable sellers are still charging a bit more for the Sunny's than the Cobras. Emax also has some 2204's that are an even cheaper option I'm tempted by since I've been very happy with the 1806 emax motors on my emax FPV 250. Though I'm still a bit concerned about the long term durability of the emax motors.
But with Christmas this week I just don't have the budget for any parts for at least another week or two. So I've got time to think this over and would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions. Cranial has already made a VERY strong case for going with Cobras and ZTW's - but I'm leaning towards Cobras and KISS - other than the fact that it will probably take me an extra month or more to save up that much.
The other big question is what to do for a flight controller. I do have a Flip Pro on hand...and I am planning on building this out as a FPV rig (I'll need to pick up another VTX but I have a spare camera on hand already) which means I'll want an OSD and GPS as well. I don't need them...but a GPS is cheap to add and I like being able to keep an eye on my pack voltage and get hints towards finding my way home with an OSD. The Flip pro would work...but seems a little low class for this frame.
I don't want to run Naze again. If I was just building it for LOS and acro then I'd be ok with a Naze acro. But being a full FPV hex I want better GPS and serial than Naze can provide.
A flyingF4 won't fit so as much as I'm enjoying it on my knuckle that's out
I may give a Sparky a try...but the memory limit has me a bit concerned. Quanton is really appealing...but the form factor would present some mounting issues since this frame is setup for a 36x36 board like a Naze. Sparky2 is what I'm dying for but it's not out yet...and I doubt I could talk Peabody into letting me beta test one
The new BrainFPV is really calling to me other than it's price. But if I can swing it I think it's what I'll go with as other than the lack of an integrated telemetry radio it has everything I want in a high end FC for an FPV rig.
So stay tuned, progress will probably be slow due to my budget limitations - but this is the time of year when my budget isn't quite as limiting. (And I just found out from our dogs vet today that they're going to switch her to a different arthritis medication that's substantially cheaper than the one she's on now which is costing me $70 a month - so that may help boost my budget a bit!) In the meantime I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas on motors/ESC's/FC that the community may have! I'll leave this with a final outside glamour shot:
So...the least I can to do to repay them is of course to provide some feedback and document it as I have my other builds!
Since I wasn't expecting this I don't yet have any plans on how I'm going to build it out...but more on that in a moment. First let's take a look at this frame.
I didn't do any "unboxing" photos since I didn't know what I was unboxing
But the frame came very securely packed as everything else Twitchity has sent me always arrives. Pieces were wrapped individually or in pairs and the wrapped packages were taped together to keep it all from bouncing around in shipment - top notch! First thing I did was lay it all out to see just what I had received:
I noticed that Twitchity has upgraded the hardware from stainless to aluminum since he posted about the CF edition of this frame.
The thicknesses of some of the parts have been revised since that post and the matte finish CF intrigued me enough I had to bust out the calipers and take a few measurements.
Bottom Frame: 1.5mm (varied from 1.27 to 1.35 depending on where I measured it but I'm guessing it's sold as 1.5mm sheet)
Top Frame: 1.5mm (varied from 1.30 to 1.44 - I won't actually be using this piece due to the PDB replacing it.)
Cage Plate: 1mm (varied from 0.80 to 0.94)
Mobius Mount: 1mm (pretty consistently 0.84)
Board Cam mount: 1.5mm (pretty consistently 1.35)
Board Cam mount elimination plate: 1.5mm (I assume that's what this is intended for. It came in at 1.43 consistently)
Arms: 4mm (Most very consistent at 3.85 though one came in at 3.70)
Now keep in mind my calipers are $10 cheapies from harbor freight so don't take these as absolute measurements. Overall though the consistency of the CF is WAY better than the G10/CF hybrid material used in my emax FPV 250 frame which varied far more across pieces and much more from piece to piece.
My past experience with CF frames is somewhat limited. I helped my friend build his warp but he had already done all the finishing on the CF as recommended by Soma - though he did have some spare arms I got to feel to see what it was like as shipped. I also have the emax FPV 250 I already mentioned which is a G10/CF hybrid material where the bulk of it is G10 with thin CF laminates over the top.
The finish on this out of the package blows either of them away. The CF on the warp is fantastic but it does require finishing as the edges are almost razor sharp (I actually tried to shave a few hairs on my arm with one of the arms just for giggles - which is how I know that they're only almost razor sharp
) The hybrid material used on the emax frame left my hands raw and itchy after handling it and even wearing gloves while finishing it my hands got tore up from the sharp edges. Twitch says his only trick on this stuff is to rub it on his jeans after cutting it with a diamond bit in his CNC. So I'm guessing it's something about this particular CF and his CNC setup that results in such remarkable out of the box finish. Or he's got some magical jeans...but I'm betting it's his CNC setup and the material
I'm still going to give this a quick once over in the sink with some 400 or 600 grit sandpaper - but you could probably get away with skipping it if you were careful to avoid edges when routing wires. I love the smooth edge CF gets when properly finished though and don't want to worry about any wires getting scraped so I'll spend a half hour to an hour cleaning things up. The CF itself is very unique in appearance and is hard to capture in an image or describe. It's not really matte, but it's not quite semi-gloss:
Under magnification the weave looks beautiful, and a quick check with my multimeter confirmed that it is indeed conductive across the cut edges. However I had a VERY hard time getting a reading across the faces. It took some serious scraping to a reading - far more than it took with the warp CF or the emax hybrid material. So whatever it is the manufacturer does to give it the matte appearance seems to insulate it quite well. Since the cut edges are still conductive though I'd still suggest all the usual CF precautions.
It was all I could do to put off trying to assemble it...but the mail came midday an I had a lot of work for my job to finish. Finally Friday evening on my wife's lunch break I was able to steal enough time to just barely pull off a quick test assembly:
Everything went together perfect first try. The tolerances are tight and there's no slop...but there's no interference either. On the warp a few screws were kind of tight and difficult to get in and the emax a few things seemed just slightly off but pulled together when assembled. This is remarkably accurate machining for some guy in his garage!
I did run into a minor issue during assembly trying to keep all 18 of those screws in! A bit of painters tape on them held them in place. But if Twitchity does a V4 I'd love to see him do something more like the emax frame where the cage mounts to the top plate and there are holes in the bottom plate to access the screws for the cage. That setup makes it possible to run "naked" without the cage and makes assembly much easier. At a minimum I'd suggest adding holes at the end of the battery strap slots so the FC mount screws are accessible...mainly because I'd like to be able to snug them up from time to time after having the FC come loose on my emax
I didn't take time to weight individual pieces, when I take it apart for actual assembly I'll do so if there's interest. According to Twitchity's thread the original CF prototype came in at 246g with the thicker plates and SS hardware. So it seems he's shaved 40g off of this frame with the changes. That doesn't sound like a lot, but to put it in perspective my mobius weights in at 39g - so he's basically shaved off the weight of a mobius so this frame with mobius should weight about the same as the original without. Not bad and even without fully tightening up the nuts this frame is SOLID and I have no doubts it will take me some serious effort to find any weaknesses in it
My only major concern is the bobbins for the mobius mount. I'm not convinced they'll really be beneficial. Given the light weight of the Mobius they seem too stiff to really give any benefit. Even on my emax with really soft ball style silicone dampeners I don't see much if any benefit from them. With or without I seem to get the same minimal jello. So I can't really see these stiffer bobbins giving much benefit. My other concern is that in crashes with the emax I almost always knock the mobius mount loose - which helps absorb some of the impact the mobius experiences. On here with the bobbins mounted on studs I won't have to worry as much about loosing the mobius - but I am a bit more concerned about damaging it in a crash. Drilling for ball dampeners will be tricky since the holes will have to be recentered - and I don't have a drill press anymore, so I won't be making that change anytime too soon.
Overall I'm blown away by this frame. It's easily on a par with the warp as far as quality and I can't wait to get some gear on it and get it in the air. Which means I need to make some decisions about what to put on it!
My first choice is Cobra 2204's with KISS esc's - like Cranial set the original Twitchity Hex up with. I'm just not sure I can swing it with my budget. I could pull the KISS's cranial sent me off my Twitchity quad and with the two spares he sent I'd have enough for this. I just kind of hate to pull them off of there since they finally solved the issues I had with that quad.
I've been very happy with the emax ESC's on the emax FPV 250 and they're also one of the lowest cost ESC's I'd consider. They come with a modified version of blheli on them...but for this I'd want to flash the latest blheli and use regen which their modified version doesn't include. And since they're silabs chips flashing them is a bit different than what I've done before and they can't be modified through the signal wire after flashing due to memory limits on the silabs chips.
The ZTW Spider ESC's I've heard a lot of good things about lately. They're almost as small as the KISS and use AVR chips so flashing them and being able to program through the signal wire is the same as on my BS and F20 ESC's. They don't have BEC's on them unlike the emax esc's...but I already have a spare pololu regulator on hand and the PDB is setup for that so no BEC isn't a big deal. The ZTW's are also about the same price (actually a little bit cheaper from most sources - about $4 less for 6 esc's which about covers the cost of a pololu!) as the emax so they really appeal to my budget.
What I will probably do is get a set of ZTW's for the quad and devote all 6 of my KISS to this hex. Then in a few months when I can save up the money get more KISS for the quad - unless the ZTW's with BLheli really blow me away
So that leaves a question of motors. I REALLY want to run 2204's on here. I loved the SunnySky's on my friends warp, but I've heard so many great things about the Cobras I'd really like to give them a try. And most reputable sellers are still charging a bit more for the Sunny's than the Cobras. Emax also has some 2204's that are an even cheaper option I'm tempted by since I've been very happy with the 1806 emax motors on my emax FPV 250. Though I'm still a bit concerned about the long term durability of the emax motors.
But with Christmas this week I just don't have the budget for any parts for at least another week or two. So I've got time to think this over and would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions. Cranial has already made a VERY strong case for going with Cobras and ZTW's - but I'm leaning towards Cobras and KISS - other than the fact that it will probably take me an extra month or more to save up that much.
The other big question is what to do for a flight controller. I do have a Flip Pro on hand...and I am planning on building this out as a FPV rig (I'll need to pick up another VTX but I have a spare camera on hand already) which means I'll want an OSD and GPS as well. I don't need them...but a GPS is cheap to add and I like being able to keep an eye on my pack voltage and get hints towards finding my way home with an OSD. The Flip pro would work...but seems a little low class for this frame.
I don't want to run Naze again. If I was just building it for LOS and acro then I'd be ok with a Naze acro. But being a full FPV hex I want better GPS and serial than Naze can provide.
A flyingF4 won't fit so as much as I'm enjoying it on my knuckle that's out
I may give a Sparky a try...but the memory limit has me a bit concerned. Quanton is really appealing...but the form factor would present some mounting issues since this frame is setup for a 36x36 board like a Naze. Sparky2 is what I'm dying for but it's not out yet...and I doubt I could talk Peabody into letting me beta test one
The new BrainFPV is really calling to me other than it's price. But if I can swing it I think it's what I'll go with as other than the lack of an integrated telemetry radio it has everything I want in a high end FC for an FPV rig.
So stay tuned, progress will probably be slow due to my budget limitations - but this is the time of year when my budget isn't quite as limiting. (And I just found out from our dogs vet today that they're going to switch her to a different arthritis medication that's substantially cheaper than the one she's on now which is costing me $70 a month - so that may help boost my budget a bit!) In the meantime I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas on motors/ESC's/FC that the community may have! I'll leave this with a final outside glamour shot:
