DJI Inspire 1 repair tutorials

[supasympa]

You can get CA debonder - it works well, but can take quite a bit of time to work through the bond as you can imagine. I have found it can take several hours just to debond small items (of just a few mm), so larger items are going to take longer & require a lot of debonder - but it does work !

http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/store/__8458__Un_Cure_CA_Debonder_1_oz.html

The acetone appears to work well enough to unbind the cured epoxy on the CF and the resin that sticks it to the plastic . Going to need a lot to be able to soak remove all the plastic parts and I'm not convinced that, that will even work.

I have managed to purchase a replacement CF tube which matches the dimensions of the I1 arm in diameter and sheet width.

 

[Phatzo]

I am following keep it up. very very very curious on how you get along and what you will find out way to go !!!

 

[blade strike]

The bond is actually done with Heat, That is why these parts are non-user serviceable.

 

[supasympa]

The bond is actually done with Heat, That is why these parts are non-user serviceable.

Thanks Blade Strike. I really appreciate you clearing that up. Does this mean that when dealers do make repairs they will replace the whole arm assembly and put the feet on? If that's the case, do you think it would be possible that DJI might sell these replacement arms in the future? What about the feet? I've seen lots of people with broken shocks myself included (rather stupidly).

I've just got around to writing an introduction to what I'm hoping to do. Sorry for the amount of time this is taking. I have a lot of other work and have to fit this in in my spare time.

http://blog.supasympa.com/2015/0 ... rdown-introduction/

More coming soon I hope.

@Tahoe_Ed, @blade_strike, if you or someone else at DJI are able to comment on the questions I have (in my blog post) around warranty and the cost of replacing a shock I'd be really happy to reflect this in my blog posts. I hope that no-one at DJI thinks that what I'm doing is disruptive or in any way in conflict with them making the Inspire 1 more of a success. I'm hoping that showing how some of these craft are put together might help the community out.

 

[gogowanda]

@supasympa is it possible to share the specs on the carbon arms? since you've had everything apart by now. We can have these carbon tubes cut to the specs within a couple of weeks if we got the right numbers.

 

[supasympa]

@gogowanda

These measurements are approximations
Outer-Diameter ~22mm
Thickness ~1mm
Length ~350mm

For £19 I purchased a rolled tube which I plan to adapt:
Length ~500mm
Outer-Diameter ~21.8mm
Thickness ~19mm

The thing I don't know is weight and I suspect this is pretty important!

The plastic parts would be hard to replace, I'm guessing that, if you were that way inclined and had lots of time to devote to it, you could 3D print them. I'll try to write up my next blog post with some video and pictures to try and explain why this isn't easy but essentially you're talking about a standard piece of CF with some holes in and some bespoke pieces of plastic heat moulded to it.

Then reattaching it back to the Inspire could be very challenging. If you look at the picture at the head of my blog post:

http://blog.supasympa.com/2015/02/24/dji-inspire-1-repair-and-a-possible-teardown-introduction/

You can see the piece of material in the centre of the arms that attaches to the lever arms. This has a plastic housing with two metal "fixing rings" inside, which I'm guessing are to allow the mechanism to rotate slightly as the landing gear raises. Getting this off is one thing, replacing the CF inside this and reattaching it to the hub of the aircraft looks impossible. I'm guessing these are custom made parts that DJI have plenty of. Just looking at it makes me want to stop where I am and not go any further, but I'm rather "invested" now.

 

[blade strike]

Thanks Blade Strike. I really appreciate you clearing that up. Does this mean that when dealers do make repairs they will replace the whole arm assembly and put the feet on? If that's the case, do you think it would be possible that DJI might sell these replacement arms in the future? What about the feet? I've seen lots of people with broken shocks myself included (rather stupidly).

I've just got around to writing an introduction to what I'm hoping to do. Sorry for the amount of time this is taking. I have a lot of other work and have to fit this in in my spare time.

http://blog.supasympa.com/2015/0 ... rdown-introduction/

More coming soon I hope.

@Tahoe_Ed, @blade_strike, if you or someone else at DJI are able to comment on the questions I have (in my blog post) around warranty and the cost of replacing a shock I'd be really happy to reflect this in my blog posts. I hope that no-one at DJI thinks that what I'm doing is disruptive or in any way in conflict with them making the Inspire 1 more of a success. I'm hoping that showing how some of these craft are put together might help the community out.

Dealers do not make repairs. Currently only DJI US or DJI China can make these type of repairs on the arms. More than likely any boom type damage will require a new assembly.

 

[supasympa]

Dealers do not make repairs. Currently only DJI US or DJI China can make these type of repairs on the arms. More than likely any boom type damage will require a new assembly.

Again, thanks Blade Strike. I appreciate the (official?) word on this. Luckily the Inspire I have doesn't have any boom damage - but the one I bought to attempt to fix has a broken arm /boom.
I've not yet got my permissions in the UK to do professional aerial work yet but you're saying if I was using this as part of an aerial photography business and I had an accident, I'd have to ship my aircraft to China or the US to get it fixed! I'm guessing that would take around 2 weeks or more to turnaround. If this was in the summer potentially when business was good I'd possibly be losing a lot of work over those two weeks unless I had a backup unit. I want to be as objective as possible here but, doesn't that make owning the Inspire 1 a bit of a bad decision for professionals? The advert that is rapidly rotating at the bottom of my screen says "Professional aerials for everyone".
I'm not anti DJI at all but I'm invested in their products, certainly for the moment, and feel that allows me to ask questions about things that concern me.

 

[blade strike]

If you're a professional, you do need a back up for any tool that you use. ANYTHING can happen. That would be like only owning or bringing one camera to a shoot. This wouldn't be a very smart business decision imho. I know many professional in the industry and they always have backup craft.

You question are valid

 

[supasympa]

If you're a professional, you do need a back up for any tool that you use. ANYTHING can happen. That would be like only owning or bringing one camera to a shoot. This wouldn't be a very smart business decision imho. I know many professional in the industry and they always have backup craft.

You question are valid

Thanks (again). I agree that you should always have a backup for any kit and I do. What I'd hoped though was that rather than having multiple units I could have a collection of spare assemblies (much like you can with the Spreadwings or even the Phantoms for the most part) and if I had a structural issue I could just replace that assembly / part. It looks to me like that's not the case, specifically for the Inspire 1 and the only way to get around it is to have the only form of redundancy available - buy multiple units! Wow.

 

[blade strike]

I will use a camera body for example... Does Panasonic allow you to fix a camera body if the shutter breaks? Unfortunately some parts on the inspire are not currently user serviceable. Will this change? Possibly, but that is above my rank and pay scale.

 

[supasympa]

@blade_strike, I completely get what you're saying about the camera body - but I feel like this is a little apples vs oranges. Without meaning to sound argumentative: If my camera body broke because I dropped it that would be a freak accident. If a structural part of my Inspire 1 broke because it dropped a little heavy on landing it's almost expected.
I'm not here to hound anyone or argue unnecessarily but seeing as this industry is young and DJI are one of the forerunners in RTF UAV equipment I'd hope that they'd be able to listen to concerns like this and address them accordingly, which as you pointed out they might do in the future. In the mean time ... any support anyone can give me in trying to fix this aircraft myself would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Bene]

So when you burrow down into the electronics, can you see if there is anywhere to tap into a video signal? I would love to attach a 5gig transmitter to allow for separate monitoring of the camera. I have a small fortune invested in portable video receivers that I use while flying my phantom I would love to use with the I1. My system works great on the phantom, and not having a producer standing right behind me trying to watch my screen makes for a better day! .

 

[gogowanda]

@gogowanda

These measurements are approximations
Outer-Diameter ~22mm
Thickness ~1mm
Length ~350mm

For £19 I purchased a rolled tube which I plan to adapt:
Length ~500mm
Outer-Diameter ~21.8mm
Thickness ~19mm

The thing I don't know is weight and I suspect this is pretty important!

Great, thanks. It doesn't cost much to make these plastic joints, you can get them printed for roughly 70 cents /cm3. Or even cut them in billet aluminum. We may get something going pretty soon. Too much on hand right now.

 

[Kilrah]

So when you burrow down into the electronics, can you see if there is anywhere to tap into a video signal? I would love to attach a 5gig transmitter to allow for separate monitoring of the camera.

I am 90% sure they didn't waste a connection by routing an analog video signal out of the camera, no point when everything's built digital from the ground up.

 

[Kilrah]

I was using this as part of an aerial photography business and I had an accident, I'd have to ship my aircraft to China or the US to get it fixed! I'm guessing that would take around 2 weeks or more to turnaround. If this was in the summer potentially when business was good I'd possibly be losing a lot of work over those two weeks unless I had a backup unit. I want to be as objective as possible here but, doesn't that make owning the Inspire 1 a bit of a bad decision for professionals?

As a professional you'll quickly run into trouble if you don't have minimum 3 machines in working order on a normal day. So you can have one down, yet still have 2 to continue working (as you never commit to a job without a backup).

2 weeks to ship the whole aircraft back and forth and be sure you get it in working order is easy, even when you can fix it yourself doesn't mean you manage to get the parts any quicker. Try 2 months to replace a crashed Z15 Zenmuse because everyone is out of stock, then get a dud replacement that takes another month to get replaced (because everyone is still out of stock). Then you install it, and something else you didn't see was also broken on the S800.

That does and will happen, having a machine down for weeks/months is pretty much normal and should be expected.

 

[supasympa]

@Kilrah - sounds like good advice, thanks. This thread is getting scary, each post seems to suggest that being professional will require an extra unit more than the last post suggested we're at a minimum of three units now!

 

[Kilrah]

Well TBH it all depends at what level you want to work.

If you just want a side income by going to individuals and offer them shots of their house nobody's gonna care if they have to wait 2 more weeks (or you just only come to them when you've got a working machine).

But if you intend to make some amount you can depend on, which will likely require you to work for other professionals, not showing up on a shoot is just not an option, or you won't be called again. Especially when there are 10 other people involved on that shoot...

 

[supasympa]

@Kilrah - Agreed and definitely understood. At the moment I don't do any aerial work for a profession so all this advice is interesting! Here in the UK we have to get CAA permission to do it legally which I'm probably 3/4 of the way through. From what I've seen so far though, there may be a market here for wedding and events photographers to make a bit of pocket money but the film and TV industry is fairly well serviced, as I expected. What I'm hoping to do is augment my current business by offering aerial work for web publication to add to any stories.

 

[gogowanda]

@Kilrah - Agreed and definitely understood. At the moment I don't do any aerial work for a profession so all this advice is interesting! Here in the UK we have to get CAA permission to do it legally which I'm probably 3/4 of the way through. From what I've seen so far though, there may be a market here for wedding and events photographers to make a bit of pocket money but the film and TV industry is fairly well serviced, as I expected. What I'm hoping to do is augment my current business by offering aerial work for web publication to add to any stories.

supa, you may want to check out ray roman's wedding videos, he uses drones to shoot a few seconds of aerial footage. we sit through his seminar not long ago and totally loved it. the thing is, it's hard to make a profession out of just flying the drone. given how easy it is to pickup. you probably want to become a more comprehensive video service and drone will be a impressive feature on of the whole package. we first bought the drone thinking oh cool we can do our motorcycle vids now, but soon realized it's best to be used "on top of" a well established video skill set.