Hey all. Newb here. Just received my Phantom 3 today and while I was busy calibrating and setting everything up according to the manual, the housing for the gimbal (where the SD card slides in) grew extremely hot. This was probably because the motors were running and didnt have air rushing through them as if in flight. My question is should I be concerned that the extreme heat could have caused any damage? I haven't flown it outdoors yet on any long flights and everything seems to be functioning well after that one incident but electronics and heat never mixed well and Im sure they are not about to start with my P3. Anyone else experience gimbals heating up to the point of too hot to touch?

Should be OK.. The gimbal base and VPS does get warm when its powered on indoors or not flying..

If I plan to have it on a long time ( copying damn flight logs takes ages ), I use a small desk fan to flow over it..

I'm hoping it will be fine. This wasnt just warm. It was too hot to leave your finger on without it burning. I'll see how it flies over the weekend.

chrroman Posted at 2015-9-2 09:18
I'm hoping it will be fine. This wasnt just warm. It was too hot to leave your finger on without it  ...

It will be OK..

Maybe use a fan next time but it is known to get toasty when not in the air.

Did you remove the polystyrene block on the rear of the gimble when you unboxed your device

Yea, everything was off. I think it was just the motors running while sitting on a table in a warm room. The cover looks like it was built to handle a lot of heat so I'm just going to hope for the best.

Having been in electronics for many decades, I am a bit conservative.  With solid state devices, I use the 5 second rule.  If I can't hold my finger on it for 5 seconds, it is too hot.  Some commercial gear is made to run so hot that it stinks.  I don't like that at all.  Maybe I'll make some temperature tests with my IR thermometer later this week and post them.  I don't think you said which Phantom 3 you have, but the Pro must run hotter because, as I understand it, it has a fan to help cool it.

Hi I’m having serious trouble here the wires actually disconnected so I had to re connect them and this still made them very hot and I haven’t flown it yet fully but it started smoking when they was disconnected and I still can’t see through the camera I don’t get why everything is connected properly and it’s not saying disconnected the gimbal is just lose can you help please ?