The one thing I've learned in the year I've been flying is that crashing is inevitable. It sucks to have to spend so much time on your workbench fixing/building stuff instead of out flying but it quickly becomes a part of the hobby.
Anyway I was flying (crashing) an original "David Windestål" tricopter for a while but a couple of months ago I decided to help these guys for being so awesome and buy bat bone frame from them.
As I mentioned before the inevitable happend and I crashed it pretty bad. All the delrin parts of the 13-370 straight motor mounts and the tilt motor mount got completely destroyed so I had to figure out a way to rebuild it.
The first picture is my full rebuild.
First thing is how I made new landing gears. I saw another article here about using PVC tubes and I thought it was an awesome solution to the problem. I used a 7cm diameter tube to give the camera mount a little more clearance from the ground than the original mounts. So I using a saw I cut them into aproximately 12mm wide rings, you don't have to be so accurate and going thinner than the booms will make them securing with zip ties more resistant.
As you can see this gives better clearance from the ground to the camera mount and while testing it I discovered that this PVC landing gear makes it really bouncy on hard landings, so I really recommended to try it.
Now the tilt mechanism was a little bit more challenging but it came out suprisingly good. I used a small piece of 11mm wood (old boom) I cut to separate the servo from the tricopter back boom. I used hot glue in between the boom and the small piece of wood and again hot glue to paste the wook to the servo. Then I used 3 zip ties to secure it firmly to the boom alternating the directions of the zip ties to bite firmly into the wood.
At this point the only problem was that the zip ties didn't really bite into the servo, so once again I used hot glue to secure the zip ties to the servo. This keeps everything from rocking.
I first was afraid that that the servo torque would twist the servo in its place but it doesn't move at all. So after this everything is rebuilt and I'm back to flying.
Additional details of my build in case you want to know:
Motors are Sunny Sky v2216-12 800kv
Props are GWS EP1047 and EP1047R
Servo BMS-385DMG
ESC 3x Hobby King 20A UBEC (simmonK firmware)
Flight controler is a KK 2.0 with 1.6 firmware
FPV gear is the Fatshark Teleporter V3 with Immersion RC CP antennas
Tx is Turnigy 9XR with FrSky DJT
Rx is a FrSky V8FR-II
I'm not an English native speaker so sorry if I wrote something wrong, send me a msg and I'll fix it.
update 1/21 : changed depron to delrin as pointed out by Eddy Current
We had the same unfortunate experience that you, RONcket, had with the Bat Bone landing gear and rear landing gear/tilt mechanism. These Delrin parts (I think you mistakenly called them depron) are simply not thick enough to stand up to the typical landings that a beginner is going to subject them to. We built a Bat Bone for my nephew for Christmas and by the end of the day (3 flights) one of the front landing gear was broken and the rear landing gear, which is integrated into the tilt mechanism, was broken too. This left the tilt mechanism unusable.
We ending up at our Local Hobby Shop the next day and purchased the Nylon Nose Gear Bearings by SIG Manufacturing (part No. SIGSH113 & SIGSH114) and we build David Windestål’s original tilt mechanism. It is very durable and the parts came to $3. For replacement landing gear, we ordered the FliteTest “Simple Delrin Landing Gear” which are “Made from the thicker 2.5 mm delrin” they have held up to some hard crashes without any of the problems of the landing gear that come with the full Bat Bone kit.
I like the Bat Bone center plate design ($32.00 in the FliteTest store) and their Simple Delrin Landing Gear ($3 each in the store) are thick and strong enough to stand up to hard landings. I’d recommend that someone who is new to multirotors should consider finding the Nylon Nose Gear Bearings and connecting them to form David’s original tilt mechanism. Follow this advice and you’ll be happy with the money you’ve spent.
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I would have bought more landing gears, but they actually cost me more to ship than the cost of the gears.
Since your nephew will most likely crash again look into the PVC landing gear, you will be surprised bouncy they are and how well they can take a beating.
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