dmiles
lvl.3
Flight distance : 455312 ft
United States
Offline
|
Glad to see you are back flying again. Since I have been involved with the Phantom, I found out quite by accident that a good friend also has a phantom that was in need of repair, so I took a look.
He had 2.0 ESCs, and one was bad. I could tell which one it was because when he first turned it on, there was a chirp, and then it shut down. If you held the motors right up to your ear, you could tell which one was chirping, and then a look at the FETs revealed a small burnt spot on one of them, but you had to look close to see it.
So we ordered a 2.1, and since I have been doing component level replacement for more than 30 years, I went ahead and replaced it for him. Not to belittle anyone's efforts, but this is some of the easiest soldering there is. It's surface mount, but large pads for the solder, so you don't even have to go through the board. I also agree with what was said in your other thread about connectors being a possible source of problems. If it's a critical connection, solder is much better.
Just a tip, I found that for me, it was easier to put a small dab of solder on the pad first, and then it was very easy to make the connections look just like the ones from the factory. Also, even though it came with power leads already soldered to the board, I removed them and used the ones that were used on the old ESC. My thinking was that if I suddenly went all crazy with the soldering iron and caused some damage, I would rather be repairing or replacing the ESC, than the main board, but YMMV.
Anywho, it went fine, and just confirmed what my friend already though about me being a genius and all. One point I did want to bring up is that we opted not to replace all of the ESCs. My thinking was that there probably wasn't that much difference between a 2.0, and a 2.1, and I was concerned about the likelihood going way up of actually inducing a problem with all the extra soldering. Also, one thing I noticed....after I removed the defective ESC, I started it up just to see if it would start up with the bad one disconnected. It not only started up, but I was able to rev up the remaining three motors, no problem. It was like the thing didn't even know one was out.
So, if anyone has any information regarding the difference between a 2.0 and a 2.1, I would appreciate it if you would share it here. If my buddy needs to replace the other 3, I want to make sure that gets done. Also, does anyone know if these things will fly with only 3 rotors? I had a flyaway with mine, and looking back on the way it looked when it flew away, it was leaning pretty hard. Originally I chalked it up to a catastrophic failure with the phantom losing it's home position (which I know it had before I took off), but if these things will actually fly with a bad ESC, I could see it not being able to come back home as well. |
|