Maker Hangar Episode 8: Electric Parts

Fun & Games Technology
Maker Hangar Episode 8: Electric Parts

Maker Hangar is a 15-part video series by Lucas Weakley.

YouTube player

In Episode 8 of Maker Hangar, Lucas Weakley shows us all the parts he chose to go on the Maker Trainer! We also learn how to solder the different R/C connectors onto the ESC. Lucas also goes over how to connect all the wires together and bind your radio so you can control everything.


MAKE and Lucas Weakley have teamed up to bring you Maker Hangar, a 15-episode tutorial series that will teach you everything you need to know to build and fly this custom RC plane, the Maker Trainer.

New installments will air every Tuesday and Thursday through August. Also, be sure to join us on the Maker Hangar Google+ Community page to share your ideas, comments, photos and video and details for your own RC plane project builds.

Lucas Weakley is a 17-year-old Eagle Scout who will be a senior next year in the Engineering and Manufacturing Institute for Technology (EMIT) at Forest High School in Ocala, Fla. Lucas became interested in flight and got his first RC plane for his ninth birthday. Recently he’s been designing and building his own planes and hosts an R/C aircraft YouTube show called BusyBee TV. Lucas also has his own aerial videography company called TopView Aerials.

For more information about the series, as well as archived videos, head to the Maker Hangar page.

2 thoughts on “Maker Hangar Episode 8: Electric Parts

  1. adcurtin says:

    a few things:

    heat gun is way easier than a lighter. a lighter can catch the heat shrink on fire (or maybe my heat shrink sucked), and as you demoed, it leaves soot.

    putting the little bit of solder on the tip is to increase the area of the bullet connector in contact with the area of the chisel tip, so it has better thermal transfer from the tip to the connector.

    When the bullet connector and the helping hands are really hot, your wet sponge is a great tool! wet has a high specific heat, so the water in the sponge will take a lot of heat to heat up. This is actually not optimal for the iron because it cools it down a lot (so less water on the sponge is better, and why some people prefer brass wool). However, it works great to cool down your hot components, like the helping hands and the bullet connector. It’ll cool them down so they’re not uncomfortable to touch and hold in a couple seconds. Usually my helping hands aren’t too hot, so I’ll put out whatever I’m soldering and cool it down right on the sponge.

    when you solder the negative lead to the xt60 connector, you’re melting the solder with the iron. You never want to do this (except as mentioned above: just a little bit to increase thermal contact between the iron and what you’re soldering) as you are much more likely to end up with cold solder joints. If you heat up what you’re soldering enough to melt the solder and touch the solder to that instead, surface tension will pull the solder over everything and you’ll end up with a quality solder joint. The second technique you used is a little better, since it ensures you have good solder contact to the connector, but you should make sure the wire is pre-tinned (as it was here) and maybe leave the iron on the connector long enough to melt the solder on the wire too.

Comments are closed.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

I'm a word nerd who loves to geek out on how emerging technology affects the lexicon. I was an editor on the first 40 volumes of MAKE, and I love shining light on the incredible makers in our community. In particular, covering art is my passion — after all, art is the first thing most of us ever made. When not fawning over perfect word choices, I can be found on the nearest mountain, looking for untouched powder fields and ideal alpine lakes.

Contact me at snowgoli@gmail.com or via @snowgoli.

View more articles by Goli Mohammadi

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK