How about killing vibration at the source?

tanasit said:
I lube the motors bearing after 15 flights or so. I have to drill a hole underneath each motor for much easier oiling, otherwise you have to remove the motor. :shock:

what do you use for lubricant?
how do you drill underneath each motor without removing it??.
next time you do so, post a pic. I'm curious where one would (safely) drill.. and without altering balance.
 
P1240591Small_zps5431cd85.jpg


You don't need to remove the frame but you'd better off removing the motor.
Once the bottom of the frame (sorry not the motor as you may misunderstood) open up, you can easily lube the bottom bearing.
Look for brushless motor oil like these:

http://www.amazon.com/Brushless-Hi-Perf ... B0032HF79M

http://www.completeheli.com/hyperion-br ... 4AodexwAZg
 
tanasit said:
You don't need to remove the frame but you'd better off removing the motor.
Once the bottom of the frame (sorry not the motor as you may misunderstood) open up, you can easily lube the bottom bearing.

That's a great idea, and may help cool then motor with a little air flow. But how do you lube the upper bearing?
 
Sac D said:
tanasit said:
You don't need to remove the frame but you'd better off removing the motor.
Once the bottom of the frame (sorry not the motor as you may misunderstood) open up, you can easily lube the bottom bearing.

That's a great idea, and may help cool then motor with a little air flow. But how do you lube the upper bearing?

For the upper bearing, point the tip of the oiler as seen below. You only need a drop or two but if you overdid it, when the motors spin the excess will be squirted out but may be a little messy.

P1240912Small_zps7672d6af.jpg
 
A few days after I balanced the motors, I did the balancing act one more time and I found that I can fine tune 3 out of 4 motors. Yes you can just balance the motors at half throttle to mimic the hovering which we spend most of the time flying. But it doesn't hurt when you get the motors balanced at mid stick then just push the throttle to maximum to see if you can even do better. I had to add a little piece of tape about 1/4 of what I had on earlier to get even better readings.
The same goes for the props, so after a week of flight or so why not check the props balance over again. You may be surprised!
Happy flying everyone...
 
out of curiosity, has anyone been able to find a way to balance the motors without having to remove the shell and disconnecting the motors? also, i read somewhere that the bearings that comes with the motors are either sealed or shielded, and in either case, should not be oiled since the oiling can remove the lube that is in there. any thoughts?
 
auck said:
out of curiosity, has anyone been able to find a way to balance the motors without having to remove the shell and disconnecting the motors? also, i read somewhere that the bearings that comes with the motors are either sealed or shielded, and in either case, should not be oiled since the oiling can remove the lube that is in there. any thoughts?

I think the only way to balance motors is to balance them one motor at at a time
..and the only way to do that is to disconnect the motors.

unless.. somehow you can do it in manual mode, but I don't believe that's workable.
 
There is no way that you can balance the motors without removing the top and disconnect all motors except the one that you want to balance.
I already tried using the rubber band holding my iPhone with the app as close as possible to one motor, but the vibration can not be isolated since all 4 are connected to the same frame.

As for the sealed bearings, I don't trust the manufacture that they properly lubricate them. For example, I took my cordless drills apart before the first use and I found that somehow they injected the grease into the cavities nearby the gears but managed to touch any moving parts of the gear. You may think after some uses, the grease may find the way into the gear but it won't be a good as hand lubricated.
Last week I received my new Phantom and I started to balance the motor. I noticed that once the motor spun for the very first time, the vibration graph went crazy for 30 seconds or so and settled down. Next I lubricated the motor and took a second measurement and I could see that the vibration went down even more. I finally use the motor spray to clean all the motors and lubricated all of them with high speed motor bearing oil, then I ran the motors for a few minutes to get rid of the excess oil. Finally I balanced the motors.

I ordered the bearing set below that claimed ceramic coated steel balls and it's very cheap so I will let you know how they work out.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261191101250?ss ... 1439.l2649
 
Gizmo3000 said:
While flying recently I couldn't help notice how much louder it sounded.
turns out one of my motors is making some serious noise and vibrations due to the bearings being bad.

So i'm doing to swap it out for a new motor, and figured while the shell is off I'll attempt to balance the motors as well.

So tape is really the only way to go to balance a motor?

No necesary replace motor, just replace bearings... Oil the othes and you'll ear smooth sound on them. :geek:
 
Gizmo3000 said:
auck said:
out of curiosity, has anyone been able to find a way to balance the motors without having to remove the shell and disconnecting the motors? also, i read somewhere that the bearings that comes with the motors are either sealed or shielded, and in either case, should not be oiled since the oiling can remove the lube that is in there. any thoughts?

I think the only way to balance motors is to balance them one motor at at a time
..and the only way to do that is to disconnect the motors.

unless.. somehow you can do it in manual mode, but I don't believe that's workable.


disconnecting the motors means having to sever the soldered wiring and then re-soldering them once done. I am no good at soldering so was hoping there was a way to do it without having to resort to that. any one has ideas? i mean if the phantom was only say $50 i wouldn't mind, but it's well over 10 times that so frying a circuit is not ideal. (i know it is suppose to be easy, but i've fried my share of DIY circuit boards to know i don't have what it takes to do the soldering.)

as for the oiling, how often you guys think we should oil the motors?
 
auck said:
disconnecting the motors means having to sever the soldered wiring and then re-soldering them once done. I am no good at soldering so was hoping there was a way to do it without having to resort to that. any one has ideas?

I believe you can do it without messing with the wires by simply yanking the ECS cables out of the NAZA (keeping track of which ones go where).

Also, instead of soldering-resoldering and dealing with the circuit board.
I cut all my wires and then soldered 3.5mm bullet connectors. (male on the motor side, female on the ESC side).
as that's the way the motors are shipped for the larger DJI quads.
 
Marcom Electronic Components is a company who make vibration absorbent grommets .These are quite expensive silicon washers but they really do the trick and look a lot nicer than gel.
 

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auck said:
disconnecting the motors means having to sever the soldered wiring and then re-soldering them once done. I am no good at soldering so was hoping there was a way to do it without having to resort to that. any one has ideas?
Use block connectors. It'll add a few grams of weights but nothing significant.

What lubricant oil are you guys using for the bearings?
 
Hello everyone. I've certainly found out that balanced props are not the final answer to canceling vibration. I've designed and built my own motors for a long time and try to design them so the rotor can easily be balanced. Some conventional motors can't be balanced easily though. The casting of the front end bell has the threads on it which means you need a different approach. I may be speaking to soon because I haven't had a motor off yet but I did try to loosen the set screw on the rotor of a motor that I suspect to be vibrating for some reason other than the prop. I fashioned a special Allen wrench that had no play what so ever but could clearly tell I wouldn't loosen the screw without spinning the or breaking the wrench. Has anyone ever been able to get this screw loose? Anyway I've only seen a few retail motors that where in balance unless they where very hi end quality and they usually brag about factory balance. I didn't see anyone mention balancing from inside the rotor. I have fixed motors for friends in our flying club (CMAC Corsair Model Airplane Club in Akron Ohio) and when I repaired them I also balanced them. Some I had to use lead solder in between the the magnets to get the balance. I think a person could make an extended bearing holder with open end bearings so the end of the holder could be put in a V block or small vise and be long enough to reach inside the rotor. I think it would be free spinning enough to get some results. What do you think, maybe I'll try it. I have a particular problem with my Phantom. When I play back video I get an intermittent and uneven noise on the sound track. The noise as it varies make it seem clearly associated with the jello on the video. The noise is not heard while flying but sounds like it could be a bearing, even though without the props all the motors seem to sound the same. It's really perplexing. On the audio it actual sounds like there's a loose magnet that rubs against the stator. That's why I wanted to pull the rotor off. If you have any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them.
This is my first post and I'm happy to be here and hope to have something to contribute once in a while. If you don't know me already and want to see what some of my motors look like you can visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbU-uOdK ... qVKQSXudk4
Cheers.
John Hav.
 
I have Loads of different W pure silicon oils from Airsoft maintenance.

can I use it to oil my motors? and is removing and reinstalling the motors, risky or detrimental to the future performance of the aircraft?

And also, we can run individual motors while the phantom is connected to the NAZA M Assistant software for balancing! :)
 

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