Disc Dyes II

Disc Dyes II
After the success of last time , I wanted to push the limits a little more with a few different ideas.

A negative dragon -

A dragon dyed on green translucent plastic (Westside discs - Opto Fuse), I made it a negative dye, keeping the dragon green and translucent, and making the rest of the disc a very dark green/black. If you hold it to the light it is still slightly translucent. The intention was to achieve a much lighter dye, but the Opto plastic takes dye very quickly. I'm still happy with the dye despite this, and a little excess dye that I got on the back side, thankfully not over the dragon itself.

Multi dip dyes

There were two multi-dip dyes I wanted to do, a death-star in gray and black, and a companion cube, with 2 levels of black. Sadly I couldn't source iDye poly locally in gray, and I wanted the discs completed for the Sizzler ACT champs this weekend, so I had to achieve the gray colour using less time, rather than a different dye.

The death star

Dynamic Discs - Purple/gray Fuzion Renegade Finding a suitable image was a challange, I wanted the in construction look, but with a simple 2-3 tone colour scheme and simplified. I couldn't find anything with all of these features, so I ended up modifying one quite extensively to make it look partial. There were a lot of parts to this stencil, lots of cuts, and minimal structural integrity, it wasn't too hard, just time consuming. I'm looking forward to getting a plotter at some point to speed up this process. I dyed the black first, then weeded the gray portions and dipped again for 30secs to a minute, I really liked the light gray at this point, but sadly I had missed one of the squares, and it was already outlined in black from the cuts, so I chose to do another very short (10-30 secs) dip. I'm pretty happy with it, but I would have liked to keep the lighter gray.

My Companion Cube

Dynamic Discs - Pink Classic blend Warden The Classic plastics don't dye well, and the stamp is pretty deep. I decided to give it a try as I thought that I might get more wiggle room when making the gray areas. I still like the design, but the end result wasn't great, some gray areas were too light and lots of runs. Interestingly the Classic Blend seemed to dye worse than the Classic soft, I likely won't try it again.












 I used hockey stick tape to do the transfer this time rather than masking tape, which worked quite well, probably not much different really. A thicker adhesive plastic, and a non-clear one might help to make things easier, sometimes it's hard to tell whether you've pulled up the film or not. I'll be getting a few new colours of dye, and then I want to get a cutter or a record player to try a few new things, but the next dye will be another 3 colour multi dye on a nice white Lat64 gold line disc, should turn out well, but I'm still working out what order to do the colours in, and to get some gray dye in.

Turnigy 9XR mods

The 9XR is a nice transmitter, but the Australian stock only included a mode 1 models, and I wanted mode 2, but also wanted it ASAP. This can be changed easily in the settings, and the springs can be swapped between the gimbals - if you find yourself getting the soldering iron out you are doing it wrong. Seriously, it's way easier to pull each gimbal apart, swap the pillars and springs and put all of the sensors back in the exact spot they came from.

Internal Antenna

The orange box 'features' an external antenna, but the threads are weak, and just putting it down on it's back, or knocking it over will result in it breaking. I broke mine quickly, so I needed another option or to live with extremely limited range. I saw a few posts of people using the internal antenna on the previous revision of the orange box, but saying it was no longer possible.
I pulled it apart, and while it wasn't as easy as they had found it was certainly doable. The SMA connector footprint is close enough to hold a u.fl connector, and the box is set up for dual antennas, so I didn't even need to remove the old one. Bridge the signal trace with a solder bead, and attach a u.fl surface mount to the footprint.

Then use a IPX or u.fl to MCX cable - shorter is better. Check the fit with the internal connector, and work out what needs to be removed from the orange ccase. Cut it out, cover with electrical tape, connect the u.fl (try not to do this multiple times, they aren't meant to be undone without the right tools) and pack it all back up.

Update: after a few months this seemed to start failing abit more often, and eventually I had to replace the transmitter, It may be fixable, we had some issues with some other ones with the board to board connectors failing due to a lack of physical strength.

Faceplate

I also changed the face plate to distinguish mine from everyone else's transmitter. It fits adequately, but is a little bit larger than the stock one. It works best if you tighten down the screws rather than try to get the faceplate on before adding the screws. You'll also need a torx driver, maybe a T6 T7 T8? - I had one in a multitool kit.

V2.0 cavequad

Spontaneous Projects is a chronicle of all of my projects, a reference for me, and a way to prevent others from making the same mistakes. 

The cave quad 1.0 had a limited payload, and is designed as a race quad. The particular flight that these are designed for requires a stable and controllable platform which is resistant to light impacts with the walls, and can run into the ceiling safely. 

It also needs to carry a lot of lighting and a large number of cameras and recording devices. 


V2 was designed ground up for this purpose, 600mm prop to prop with 11" props for stability and payload. 

• Lighting is provided by 3 sets of 4 parallel LED's driven at about 1A
• A single Flight camera facing forwards and looking down from near the rear of the quad to offer better perspective
• a recording camera located just under the main camera
• A gimballed camera on the front wit
  
  h its own lighting rig with a tighter beam, 
• Protective cage to reduce the chance of clipping a prop
• DVR recording on the ground, in case the whole quad is not retrievable

• Parachute to make a freefall from 100m with a broken prop non-terminal

• In theory it also has an on screen display that will be recorded on the DVR

The evolution of cave quads

V1 - Jaycar helicopter

• Very little lift - no payload for camera or lights beyond those built-in. 
• Unbalanced with an extra battery, and untested
• Flown line of sight
• No recording
• Very inexperienced pilot

V2 - 250 class quad

• 4 superbright LEDs
• no recording functionality, (camera got wet on the way in)
• Unstable on the descent
• FPV flight
• Quite experienced pilot
• Fits in a pelican case