Radio Rookie
Heliman
Location: Malaysia
| Hi Willie,
Yeah, its good to check that motor. Them magnets are strong and you will be surprised the stuff that gets pulled into the motor....washers, nuts, paper clip, staple, metal shavings...
My TRex 600 came with the ESC that has the heatsink exposed. So I guess it should be OK. So far I have been lucky (touch wood) with Align ESCs but a friend of mine had problems with his T-Rex 450SE and CDE initially.
I guess if you intend to fly the T-600 hard then I would suggest replacing the ESC with perhaps a Castle Creations as the CC has more programming features that allows you to fine tune your ESC settings and most importantly allowing you to fine tune or disable your over current cut off to prevent that dreaded "cut off and free fall like a brick accidental 3D maneuver"  .
I am a pretty heavy CC ESC user and to date the CC ESC have not given a problem except the latest CC25 (the one that comes in the new packing and new firmware) that had firmware problems causing the ESC to overheat within seconds.
I have used many brands of ESC ranging from Jeti, Kontronik, Quark, Hacker, Align and a few china made ESCs and the most troublefree so far has been the CC bar the ones with the latest firmware upgrade.
You may notice under the spare parts list, the items like the thrust bearing for the T rex V1 is similar to the T600 tail grip bearing so I guess if you are desprate for spare parts, it could be possible to use them provided you dont use excessive head speed.
I am not flying the T600 with very high head speed yet since I am just getting to know this beast but will soon once I get familiar. (on the other hand familiarity breeds contempt! ) Am toying on the idea of fitting a safety bearing retainer on the tail grip to prevent the grip from potentially flying out if or when the bearing fails as an added level of security since the present bearings appears to be standard ball bearings. Though I may be wrong and am only speculating, there is considerable lateral forces acting on the ball races that could potentially break the ball cage ending with catasrophic results.
In the T-600's tail grip design, you will notice that only the front bearing is holding the grip in place (unlike the Raptor's tail grip that uses both bearings to hold the tail blade grip thereby doubling the safety factor on the bearings) , so if the front bearing fails, then there is a potential for the tail blade to be thrown since the rear bearing is installed rearwards and therefore does not help to hold the grip against the centrifugal force of the tail blade.
Although I must guess that Align may have calculated the loading factor in, I would think as a matter of insurance (peace of mind, since I always start by having the tail facing me on take off), I am planning to install a slightly longer high tensile bolt to leverage on almost the entire lenght of one half of the hub with one small and one larger washer to act as a guard against a bearing failure since the bearing itself is not manufactured by Align and I have encountered bearing failures in the past on other helis and have become a bit paranoid.
With the slightly longer high tensile hex bolt, there should be adequate length of bolt to have the washers installed (with hopefully adequate clearence at the base of the tail rotor). The small washer should only be of slightly larger diameter than the inner race / sleeve to act as a bush/ spacer to prevent binding the larget washer from binding the bearing. The larger washer is then installed behind (nearer to the bolt head) and shall be a slightly smaller diameter than the outer race to act as the safety retainer to catch the outer race if the bearing fails.
This will be an interim solution for me until Align produces an improved grip.
Anyway I have also compared the Raptor's tail assembly against the T-600 and the tail shaft is only a tad larger in diameter (though longer) than the T-600 and could potentially be modded to fit (though I would think the some diehard T-rex owners would likely frown upon what I was about to do ). I was initially thinking of doing that to get around the initial binding problem but then decided to just polish the shaft and rework the grips, link and slider. Since the polishing and rework was successful, I dropped the plan though I am still keen to use the Raptor's tail blade grip and hub.
The raptor's grip is pretty much similar (on the ball link, so the T600 slider yoke could work though I have not tried yet)but is longer giving a resultant larger tail rotor disk that could also potentially load up the motor and reducing the ground clearence. The Raptor tail rotor hub needs to be drilled out slightly to fit the T-600 shaft since it's a hair smaller in diameter.
Anyway I will be going to the bearing shop to source for better thurst bearings that would fit the tail grip next Saturday so I dont have to content with mods. Will update you with the part number if I am able to get one.
Its great that we are bouncing ideas to improve our T-rexes.
RR |
