Drone repair advice

[RTB]

Not sure if this is the correct forum but what the hell.

I'm after some advice on the best way to repair a drone. I got an MJX Bugs 3 for Christmas off my wife and me and the kids had a great time flying it around my inlaws field. My wife insisted she had a go and crashed it into a dry stone wall and snapped an arm. Everything works fine so I've bought a replacement frame from China (£6.35 worth) with the intention of transferring all the guts from the broken frame to the new one. The wires to the motors will need cutting and re-soldering so I was thinking of adding some plugs onto the wires so that in the event it suffers the same fate in the future I can swap everything over a lot quicker. My questions are:

1) Is the plug idea a good one or will it cause problems?
2) What plug connectors should I use?

Here are some pictures of the motor and drone layout (not my drone BTW)



The motor wires have to be fed through the arms to the speed controllers, however you do have access to most of the motor wires on the underside of the arm (there are some LED covers that unscrew).



These are the motor wires....

[Easternlight]

Assuming you're OK with soldering, I would just cut the wires near the speed control and solder back together or cut the cover on the speedo back and un solder them there.
Putting connectors in is just adding weight and a failure point.

[The_Jackal]

Try and desolder the wires from the speed controller rather than cut the wires. It will get messy resoldering all those cuts.
And make a note of which colour wire goes to which connection.

[RTB]

Thanks, I'm starting to think that maybe re-soldering might be better. I just liked the idea of being able to unplug the motors as I suspect this won't be the last life saving transplant surgeries I have to carry out

[jrb43]

RTB said:

Thanks, I'm starting to think that maybe re-soldering might be better. I just liked the idea of being able to unplug the motors as I suspect this won't be the last life saving transplant surgeries I have to carry out

Run the motor wires externally and secure with colour-coordinated tape? Is that a possibility?

[cati]

cut and resolder - don't extend the wires to much as speed controllers can be a bit sensitive to to extending the wires. you end up getting surges, but sometimes this takes a lot of length sometimes only a little. I would not resolder off the board unless you really know what your doing, heat sink etc as the esc quality can be a bit variable and you might damage something else

So best to cut and resolder, use flux... heat shrink yada yada i am sure you know the drill.

[RTB]

Thanks for the advice. After taking it apart I decided to desolder and resolder straight on to the ESC board. I've done a bit of soldering (mainly splicing things/repairing car looms), but haven't done any electronics soldering since school CDT classes 25 years ago.

As things go, it went pretty well, took plenty of pictures, got all the wires resoldered without too much swearing and when I tested it it all seemed to work fine. It took about an hour and a half and about 7 quids worth of material to repair.



I don't know what solder was used in the factory but it seemed to take a hell of a lot more heat than the solder I used to reattach the wires (I was worried I was going to melt something important on the ESC). Anyway, everything seems to work alright. I've flown it around my kitchen. I just need some decent weather to take it out for a spin.

Next move is to order 2 or 3 of the plastic frames from China, I bet this won't be the last repair job.....