Alrighty, busy weekend but I finally have some time to post my build of the Twitchity Quad Super Ultra Mega Deluxe Ver 2.14.51.9 Rev 3 with PDB official name TBA (seriously... I'm horrible with these names). The main difference between my build and jhitesma's is recessing the FC in the top frame to get the lowest profile possible.
When I first thought of this idea, I was a little skeptical at how the strength/rigidity of the frame would be affected by not having the arms go into the frame more, and a large hole cutout of the top plate. To my surprise, the frame felt rock solid when assembled; my concerns as far as rigidity are gone, and with the abuse jhitesma has put it through, I'm feeling confident about its durability too.
The first step/problem I ran into was how fast the CF ate through the bits I was using to cut the material on the CNC machine. Every bolt hole (except the first one drilled) has to be enlarged with a round diamond file. This took the better part of the build process to complete, but I was able to slowly enlarge the holes so the bolt would barely slide through with a little resistance. Once that was completed I used some 400 grit wet/dry sand paper and knocked off the sharp edges on the CF pieces. Here are a few close-up shots of the 4mm CF used for the arms. The CF is twill weave with a matte finish.
With the CF all finished and motors mounted to the arms, I began preparing the PDB. All of the motor pads were pre-tinned with solder, LED's soldered in place, and some big resistors were temporarily installed until my package comes in from jhitesma with the proper sized resistors. I must say, soldering those little LED's on was the worst part of this build due to their size.
Everyone's seen these pictures before. Motor wires shortened and soldered directly to the ESC's. I like to keep everything as neat as possible here.
And heatshrink. Since all of the electronics was removed from my prototype frame, I wasn't worried about getting the wires mixed up. I unsoldered one at a time and put it back in its place. Each motor was marked so I know where it would go back on the new frame.
Motors all wired, ESC's heat shrunk down, and arms held in place by a few bolts and nuts; time to wire up the PDB. If you notice on M4 (front left) there is some heatshrink on both power wires going to the ESC's. I didn't check when I cut the wires thinking the pos and neg wires would line up with the pads, but with the EMAX ESCs they were on the opposite sides. Easy enough to fix, just needed to solder on the pieces I just cut off and cross them over the arm. If I didn't already solder on the LED's (they are polarity sensitive), I would have just reversed the wires for the battery connection so I could have ran the ESC wires straight to the solder pads.
Everything is wired up and the top plate is installed. I routed the ESC signal wires into the center of the frame, and connected M1, M2, and M3 to a single servo connector so they can be plugged right into the Naze32 (not pictured).
Finally the top cage plate is installed and the build is complete. It wasn't until I went to perform the ESC calibration that I noticed an issue... The rear bolt for the cage blocks the USB port on the Naze32... It's easy enough to fix as I can just dismount the Naze32 to connect it to my computer, but I'll probably end up running the quad without this cage since the motors stick up further than the FC. I might redo the design for the cage so it uses one bolt on each arm to mount to the frame since I like the protection it gives to the FC.
So far I've only taken it for its maiden flight since I was out of town most of the weekend. I hope to get some more flight time in tonight after work and will be adjusting some settings in baseflight.
This will be my quad I use to learn flips and rolls. I will be flying in horizon mode to help out with the recovery out of a flip/roll, but as far as the other settings go (rate, expo, PIDs), where should I start?