Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

Dear god how are you still following this thread?

Like an elephant charging towards nosy Americans that are getting too close, I seem to have hit my stride. Must be that the summer holidays have started - lots of spare time, yay!

With all of this free room to maneuver there's plenty of time....

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...to make an absolute mess of the dining room table. Now, we're not going to have dinner. I'm not finished.

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First thing on the agenda was testing the servo - I basically took the ready-made circuitry (including old battery) I used in the test chassis and hooked it up to the servo to see what was what. I could then also get a feel for how this new chassis handled.

So naturally, time for a lap through the living room:



That seemed fine! Now, it was time to get busy with the actual circuitry to be used. Right on cue I took delivery of my XT30 plugs, so right away there was more soldering to be done!

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I credit Rory from the Nuts team with putting the fuse atop the link like this - I adore how the two parts seem to be made for each other and everything. Whoever said romance was dead?

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Then, time to fit it all inside, and see how the wiring would go. The two holes in the center of the baseplate are not a poor excuse for weight saving or anything - they're for the servo mounts.

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Anyways, more soldering! Most of the circuitry is done here, save for the connection between the negative leads.

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After some more cocking about (I first wired one of the ESCs to the LED pictured above, so one motor was lagging behind) this was the eventual result. XT60 plug for the battery, XT30 for the link with a 30A minifuse, then the ESCs and parallel there's the Power LED. Everything should fit, but it's going to be rather snug in places.

Upon completing all the wiring (and fixing my LED screw up) I took it out for another drive, new battery and all. The first drive will all of the actual insides in place.



Seemed quite nippy, although the real heavy stuff (like uh... the titanium wedge and top plate) is still missing from the chassis. The prognosis is that I'll be quite underweight though, so my devious brain is already concocting evil right on par with Black Adder's weasel fetish.

Question for you though: I'm a bit puzzled as to how to solidly connect the ESC wires to the motors. Up until now I just hooked them in since that's more than enough for a test drive, but I've read that soldering the lugs of the motor is risky (the heat can screw up the insides). I reckon that I could just hook the wires in, squeeze the wires to 'fold' them after which I shrink wrap the lead so it can't go anywhere. Does that sound sensible or am I distilling a Baldrick-esque vibe upon this thread?

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