mr70ss
Senior Heliman
Location: Spokane, WA
| Alright here are the pics you have been asking for,
But first let's go over the "how to build" process…
I start by figuring out what type of light scheme I want. What colors, how far are the rings spaced apart, how many rings, what colors do I want to see on only the top or bottom or even both sides of the disk. Once I got my plan I set down and draw out what each blade should have. Keep in mind you have to do this for each blade and each side, seems how each blade WILL NOT have the same led layout, (will explain that later). For the sake of this post I’ll go through the build process for my 610mm rotortech's that you can see in my gallery (version 2).
First you need to do it clean the blades with rubbing alcohol. This helps the copper tape stick VERY well. Next I use a silver sharpie (on black blades) and measure out where I want my LED's and make a dot with the marker.
Next I run what I call "main bus bar", which is really a direct link to either + (Pos.) or - (Neg.) to the lipo battery. If you didn't know the LED's do have a + and - side. I run my main bus bars down the middle of the blade, one on top and one on bottom. (run the copper tape all the way to the tip of the blade, just make sure they don’t touch. Try to leave a gap of about 1/32” to 1/16”, if it’s bigger than that the 0805 size led will not be able to gap the connection) I personally run + on the top. (it helps when setting up the jumper connection later.)
Next is to run both a + and a – tape connection from each bus bar to each LED "dot" you made earlier. So run a piece of copper tape from the bus bar to the dot. (be sure to over lap all copper tape connections, as you will have to solder each connection later, also be sure to get both + and – run close to each other 1/32” to 1/16”)
Now if you plan on running a color other than blue, green, or white you WILL have to run a resistor. So on my rotortech’s, I have 2 red LED’s on the bottom of the disk, and if you look at the top of each blade there is a 56 ohm resistor on each one of the + runs to the red LED’s. Again be sure to use a led calculator to find out what ohm resistor your led will require.
I build one blade at a time all the way up (minus battery, more about why later) The reason is simple and again I found out the hard way… once you have one blade complete, take a long blade bolt and place it through the root of both blades(one completed) then get your sharpie back out and transfer the LED placement from the complete blade to the bare blade. Now your LED’s will be aligned to each other once they spin up.
NOTICE, that on my second ring from the tip (white) I have one LED placed at the leading edge, and on the other blade it is on the trailing edge, this makes the ring complete from any viewing angle. If you look at my gallery you will notice that on my first set there is a dead spot.
So now you should have all your LED runs complete, and now they need to be “tined” with solder. I take a tooth pick and dip it in flux and place a tiny dot of flux at every connection point. (this means every main bus bar to LED run, resistor connections, LED connections) next apply a small amount of solder to each area.
Now it’s time to break out the tweezers, no joke, they are small here is a pic, notice the green dot on the LED, that’s the - (NEG. side)
Seems how there is already solder at each LED and resistor location, all you need to do is apply a dot of flux to both ends of the LED or resistor, then hold them in place on the blade and reheat the solder. The flux will draw the solder to the part and that’s it! Remember that the LED’s have a green dot on the top, which mean – (neg.). If you have it backwards they just won’t light.
Once you have all the LED’s and resistors in place it time to mount the battery, It’s hard for me to explain (type out) how to mount the battery, and sip socket so here are some pics, like they say a picture is worth a thousand words (I hope so in this case). This is the bottom of the blade.
Next place the SIP socket on the blade (I like to angle it so the force of the blades spinning helps hold the jumper in place) Again use the dot method to run more copper tape to the main bus bars. Once you have one SIP socket done, again bolt both blades together and transfer your location from one to the other.
Now that you see how I run the connections, here is why I mount the battery last. Place both blades on the balancer, bottom side up. Next place both batteries on the blades (with the servo tape STUCK ONLY TO THE BATTERY. Now you can slide them back and forth on each blade until you have a perfect balance. Again something I learned the hard way. Once happy with the balance, mark the blade and stick the lipo to the blade.
Finally I use battery heat shrink wrap to cover the SIP socket and battery. Again be sure to have both blades on the balancer when your test fitting the shrink wrap, this is another chance to get that balance 100% perfect!
Hope the info helps, and please feel free to ask any questions you might have.
600N-YS50ST-611-Align Pipe-610 RT's
450se v2-430xl-2100t |
. You will need one resistor for every red LED.)
