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Cinestar 8 Upgrade for Medium Heavy Lift (8-10kg)

Discussion in 'Cinestar 8' started by Steve Maller, Jan 3, 2014.

  1. Dave King

    Dave King Well-Known Member

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    Looks good Steve. Are you planning on using metal clamps for the center hub as well? I'm using them and I can't tell you what a difference it makes to secure the booms from rotating. I used to worry about the booms rotating as I picked up the copter. It also makes the center hubs more solid. Good insurance.
     
  2. Michael McVay

    Michael McVay Active Member

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    Looking great Steve. I like the battery trays.
     
  3. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    I probably will. Don't have enough aluminum clamps right now.
     
  4. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    The motors I'm using are the Avroto 3515, which is apparently a customized, slightly improved version of the Tiger Motor MT3515. According to this table from RCTigerMotor.com and the parameters of my build (modulo the efficiency loss of the X8 config) it looks like either 15" or 16" props will be the way to go. I need about 1200-1300g of thrust give or take a few. But it also looks like I'll be better off switching to a 14" prop for flying lighter payloads (like a Sony CX760V).

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Michael McVay

    Michael McVay Active Member

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    If you go with the 16 inch props you get your thrust at 50% throttle and also are getting 10 grams/watt of thrust which is really efficient...should be great. It only pulls about 5 amps too. When you lighten it up a little, if you drop to 15 inch props and can live with about 1000 grams you really hit a sweet spot on this motor with 11 grams / watt. Should get some great flight times out of your batteries.
     
  6. Michael McVay

    Michael McVay Active Member

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    I have a second pilot who flies with me and I just upgraded his quad to a CS6 and he flies the Tiger 3515s on 5 and 6 cell batteries and it performs great. I think he is in the 13-15 pound range and instead of the 15x5 props he prefers the Graupner 14x8s. We need about 6000 grams between 6 motors so the 15s are a perfect fit but he thinks the 14x8s actually perform better. I think the extra pitch must make up for the 1 inch shorter length.
     
  7. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    I am trying to decide on the relative merits of soldering a female bullet connector directly to the BLs vs. using the more traditional pigtail. Is there a good reason to go with the direct bullet? It seems like there might be some additional strain relief using a pigtail, but something about the simplicity of the direct bullets appeals to me. Thoughts?
    Safari-snap001.jpg
     
  8. Dave King

    Dave King Well-Known Member

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    I thought about it but decided against it for no other reason than I had the standard pig tails to use.
     
  9. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    I’m going with Castle 4mm bullets (highly regarded) and starting from scratch (motors have bare wires). I got my nylon standoffs and screws today, so I think I’ll assemble the PDB and do a visual on how to route the wires out of the booms, and see if it makes sense one way or the other. Which way are your pigtails soldered? Can you post a photo?

    If I go with pigtails, I’m wondering whether they should be soldered at 0°, 90°, 180° or even at a slight angle...
     
  10. Dave King

    Dave King Well-Known Member

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    I found routing all 6 wires under the board was a little too crowded so I ran the top 3 over the board and the bottom 3 under the board.
    I can't remember for certain which are male and which are female off hand at work. I believe the female was on the motor side and the male was on the board side.
     
  11. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    Power board mounts work! Existing hardware didn't work with the Mikrokopter Double Quadro 2XL, so I had to order a new set of nylon screws and threaded standoffs. image.jpg image.jpg
     
  12. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    What parts did you have to order up? Or did you just stagger into Fry's or functional equivalent thereof?

    Andy.
     
  13. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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  14. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    Well, the best laid plans of mice and men...

    I had my new build ready to test last night, and everything looked good, but after doing lots of tests and firmware updates and other things with my bench power supply (running at 16V and 2 amps), I decided to plug in one of the 6S LiPos to run some motor tests and configure my mixer settings, but KABOOM and big sad face :(. One of the BLs on my board blew out in spectacular fashion. No idea at this point what caused it, but Quadrocopter has been super responsive. I have an RMA and the board will be on its way to the repair techs up there. AFAIK this is the first such incident, at least as far as the QC guys know. Anyway, I’m dead in the water for now. Sigh.

    Here’s photos of the BL before and after the incident. All my tests indicated it was OK, so I’m hoping it was a defective bit on the board, not something I did. But we’ll see. Sigh.

    Board after soldering up all my connections:
    IMG_8912.jpg

    The same spot after the flameout:
    IMG_8915.jpg
     
  15. Jason Herring

    Jason Herring Member

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    Y
    What guage wire do you use? For main power
     
  16. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    LiPo -> Main board is 10AWG (same as Mikrokopter uses)
    ESC -> motors is 14AWG (24 of ‘em)
     
  17. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    Built my "Cinespare" out of a few new CF bits, plus the left over parts from the HL upgrade. Took me 1.5 hours this morning. I'm getting pretty good at this. I may keep it as a spare or sell it. LMK if you're interested.

    That's the HL behind it. It's waiting on the replacement power board, plus I'm going to put 500mm booms on her instead of the 450s on there now.

    image.jpg
     
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  18. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    The "CINESPARE" shown above is made up of all the electronics from my old Cinestar 8. I gutted my original bird to build a coax heavy lifter (almost done!). I ordered just enough carbon fiber goodies to get the old electronics back in the air again. I was testing it at the local ball field, and it was a little top-heavy (no gimbal), and I was reminded of just how tough these copters are, and why using all aluminum clamps (I am not) is not necessarily a good idea. I maneuvered in a little too close to a tree, and clipped a prop, and the copter came down from about 20 feet or so onto the grass. Fortinately, the #5 boom absorbed all the shock, and other than the Lipo losing its EC5, there was no damage. I popped another battery on, dug out about 2 inches of soil from the boom, and re-set the motor. I was back in the air in about 15 minutes after carefully testing everything (again). :cool:

    IMG_8933.jpg IMG_8932.jpg IMG_8928.jpg
     
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  19. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    I have to say, I really like the gimbal and landing gear on the big guy. That's a very innovative way to keep the blades out of the tall grass, Steve.

    The Cinesparts is also good, although it looks a bit intimidated.

    I seem to recognize those eucalyptus trees. Haven't they been featured in a video before? Damned magnetic trees, eh? :)

    Andy.
     
  20. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    Aargh! I got the new power distro board from Germany and got it all wired up and tested tonight. It worked great. Unfortunately, one of my brand spanking new Avroto 3515 motors came up lame. Not sure if it's a bearing or what...but it sounds like it ran over a hubcap. Crazy loud, too. I opened it up, but there's nothing obvious in there.

    So now we wait for the nice man in the brown shorts to bring me yet another little box.

    Sigh. :(
     

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