Crazy gimbal after crash but gimbal appears fine after disassembly

[Andrew Horner]

My apologizes if there is already a thread about this, but I can't find it. This is a little different from every gimbal repair that I've found, and I've searched, a lot...

I crashed my P3STD pretty hard last week and I broke the gimbal mount on the bottom of the craft. Specifically: DJI Phantom 3 Part #83 Camera Vibration Absorbing Board(Sta) for P3 Standard. I replaced it and that repair went fine. Minor scratches on the drone shell, no broken props. When I put everything back together the camera flails around and then hangs and begins to overheat. I've seen this all over the Internet so I watched a half dozen videos and set to work disassembling and inspecting it. No broken shafts, all the sensors are in alignment. I took every junction apart, inspected it and put it back together. Nothing cracked or loose. It's still doing the same thing, flailing around, not finding center then hanging and overheating. When it is running, the video works and I even risked overheat and recalibrated the IMU sensors, in spite of the fact that they did not indicate a problem in the DJI Go app. All the craft sensors appear fine and I was able to initiate launch and land. I am at a loss, what else could be wrong? What am I missing. Any advise would be much appreciated. Thanks, everyone, in advance. -Andy

 

[phantomike]

mine had a similar issue. it would fly fine but the gimbal was crazy and I had no control over it. I sent it to dji for repair and they said it was the gimbal mainboard $128 plus $65 labor........I read that it would do that if the cables are not connected well so pull them and re set them. and only send it to DJI if you expect to send them $200 because almost guaranteed that is the cost they will ask you for.

 

[Andrew Horner]

Phantommike, thanks for the insight. I will give it a shot and post back what I find. Also, thanks for the warning about dji. I am going to see if I can find a board online somewhere, I'm sure someone has one from a crashed drone somewhere.

 

[Gnron]

Phantommike, thanks for the insight. I will give it a shot and post back what I find. Also, thanks for the warning about dji. I am going to see if I can find a board online somewhere, I'm sure someone has one from a crashed drone somewhere.

Mine is doing the exact same thing! You can see my post with video. Let me know what you find out please. Thanks

 

[Andrew Horner]

Mine is doing the exact same thing! You can see my post with video. Let me know what you find out please. Thanks

Gnron, sorry for taking so long to get back with my results. It took a little while to find the time. I disassembled and verified that the cables were all connected properly, they were, so I unfortunately was still stuck. (although I think I can now do it in my sleep) Fortunately, I have a friend that also has a crashed P3S, he had already replaced it with a new P4 and it was collecting dust. I convinced him to let me use it for some testing. I planned to swap the parts one at a time until I found the culprit. I got a hit on the first try. It wasn't the main board that was bad. It was the yaw arm (pitch/roll) board. Although there was absolutely no visual evidence of damage, once I swapped out the pitch/roll board it functioned perfectly. I worked out a deal with him for the board and I'm back in business. I would suspect that this may be the case for yours as well. If you can find a replacement for yours, you should give it a shot. If you know someone that will let you test it, even better. It's a very quick and easy, non-intrusive, test. Good luck.

 

[Gnron]

Gnron, sorry for taking so long to get back with my results. It took a little while to find the time. I disassembled and verified that the cables were all connected properly, they were, so I unfortunately was still stuck. (although I think I can now do it in my sleep) Fortunately, I have a friend that also has a crashed P3S, he had already replaced it with a new P4 and it was collecting dust. I convinced him to let me use it for some testing. I planned to swap the parts one at a time until I found the culprit. I got a hit on the first try. It wasn't the main board that was bad. It was the yaw arm (pitch/roll) board. Although there was absolutely no visual evidence of damage, once I swapped out the pitch/roll board it functioned perfectly. I worked out a deal with him for the board and I'm back in business. I would suspect that this may be the case for yours as well. If you can find a replacement for yours, you should give it a shot. If you know someone that will let you test it, even better. It's a very quick and easy, non-intrusive, test. Good luck.

Wow! Thank you Andrew! Could you take a pic of the pitch/roll board so I'll know which one to replace! Greatly appreciated!

 

[Andrew Horner]

I googled "phantom 3 pitch/roll board" and clicked on images. Here are two of them (the first of them is from this forum)
http://www.phantompilots.com/attachments/c-jpg.7771/
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jT7FHPoFrd4/maxresdefault.jpg
I hope it helps.

 

[treyghost]

Omg thanks so much guys for the responses and info I also have this problem after what I had to slam on brakes and didn't have my bird buckled in and she took a dive into my floorboard found a board for thirty bucks and am gonna order asap thanks again


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[Andrew Horner]

Omg thanks so much guys for the responses and info I also have this problem after what I had to slam on brakes and didn't have my bird buckled in and she took a dive into my floorboard found a board for thirty bucks and am gonna order asap thanks again


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

Hope it works out, thirty bucks is a great deal. Let me know if does the trick, I'd love to see if it's the same crash problem for others.