After hours of trying to reduce vibrations in the Alien H4 680mm quadcopter drone, I’ve decided to order two new motors.  I’ll be replacing the two motors on the rear of the craft.  Despite all the attempts to balance the motors, especially motor #3 (left rear), I’m taking a guess that one or both of the motors are damaged from the crash, or even perhaps the first flip.  The vibration is practically visible on motor #3.  I can see the landing gear visibly moving.  Touching or even getting close to touching arm #3 “tickles.”  It is obnoxious and no wonder I can’t capture any decent video.

Two new motors are on the way on the slow boat from China.  I will balance them before installation, which I should have done before.  Once the new motors are installed I’ll tear apart the old ones and check to see if the bearings or the prop posts are broken or bent.  That would cause the vibration problems.  If I can fax them, then I’ll have a couple of extra motors.

I’ve just completed the repair of my now formerly broken Arris CM3000 Pro 3-axis gimbal.  The CM3000 Pro is a 32 bit 3-axis gimbal for GoPro cameras.

There were a few broken pieces which were not that easy to replace due to the wiring for the pitch motor and the pitch sensor.  There’s some carbon fiber framing in the shape of an “L” which goes from the pitch motor to the roll motor.  Both sides of that framing were broken.  I ordered CM3000 replacement parts from Hobby-Wing, but the whole L piece came as an assembly, glued together.  Otherwise I would have just replaced the sides which were broken.

The broken gimbal:

Broken Gimbal

I had to unsolder the four tiny connections to the sensor located under the camera:

Then had to unsolder the three connections on the main board for the pitch sensor in order to unthread the wires from the old broken L arm.

Also, all the plastic screws which held the protective box for the SimpleBGC gimbal controller were broken, so had to replace those.

Repair complete.  Still need to test out the gimbal and make sure it works.

Then it is on to rebuilding the Alien H4 680 quadcopter.