I looked at a crashed I1 today with a "camo" cf legs, broken in multiple places..
What I noticed that the split has long strands of cf sticking and inside of the tubes looks very dry of resin (outside looks better)

If you talk to boat builders they will tell you that the carbon fiber has to be properly soaked in resin, even during the vacuum bagging process.

This tube looks to be very dry inside to the point of starvation of resin, so long strands of fibers come out (4-5") which is imposible if more resin were used.

Doing this way saves resin and weight but makes the tube very weak, adding more resin will improve the strength. I think the older regular cf pattern has better resin ratio so it is stronger and we see less broken tubes..

Possible, however there are far fewer A series woven CF Inspire's, than B, C, D series camo CF units.  Based soley on the numbers of units sold, there is likely to be far more broken camo units than not.

mixmaven Posted at 2015-10-22 04:28
Possible, however there are far fewer A series woven CF Inspire's, than B, C, D series camo CF units ...

My "camo" leg broke after a fall from 4 feet.  It cracked and I was also noticing that it seemed like the cf strands were not all molded together.  I bought a cf kit off of ebay and made a repair.  The new carbon fiber looks like one piece of cf and appears much stronger.

fende Posted at 2015-10-21 22:31
My "camo" leg broke after a fall from 4 feet.  It cracked and I was also noticing that it seemed l ...

Exactly my point!

DJI is either trying to save epoxy or weight, while producing severely starved carbon fiber..

Just look at these pictures -

PaulKerry Posted at 2015-10-26 06:57
Wow... If it's a weight-saving measure, it appears to be working.

That one in your first photo se ...

Phone turned the pic upsidedown

Well I'm glad you are in a good mood

Save weight maybe, would more likely money

PaulKerry Posted at 2015-10-26 10:57
Wow... If it's a weight-saving measure, it appears to be working.

That one in your first photo se ...

Proper carbon fibre that produces the pattern we recognise and love , does so because of the way it's woven,


The images and camo pattern on the newer inspires are a result of slapping together wads of layers of straight fibres and gluing, therefore Dji are using a cheap version of carbon fibre,  it's light but it ain't anywhere near as strong as the real stuff, but still can claim carbon fibre for marketing purposes, I was considering adding duct to mine

ross.guardiando Posted at 2015-10-29 14:16
Proper carbon fibre that produces the pattern we recognise and love , does so because of the way i ...

Yes, that's exactly what I figured, it looks like it's glued with something different than a resin/epoxy..

I think it's barely adequate to hold the motors in place, any bump - and you are done..

Bad glass work. @ Capt_M you are 100% right. I also wonder what type of molds DJI is using for the arms? Resin and Epoxy have to be mixed just right or you have issues of either weak glass or to heavy. It's almost an art when doing carbon fiber work. Same goes with the molds. Wax on - cleaning the molds etc. You know the drill if you have done glass work. ;)

obviously those legs are not made for the hard landings... But we will be working on strength in the next models as well

Dji-tim the smaller arms that you have and old style CF legs are much better designed and much stronger, I think it makes sense to revert back to those. I inserted a 19mm x 17 mm tube in my boom and covered everything in extra layer of epoxy the weight gain was only 40 grams - which is nothing, but the boom now 4 times stronger