If I was to go the glue route, should I glue the shells together all the way around or just glue around the arms from one mounting screw to the other?
Screw inspection = very bad day
- Thread starter silverstoned83
- Start date
If I was to go the glue route, should I glue the shells together all the way around or just glue around the arms from one mounting screw to the other?
Looked this morning and mine are still crack free. UK spec Phantom - I wonder if that makes a difference?
I have to admit, this topic makes me pretty nervous. Has anybody proven that reducing the torque on the allen screws helps minimize the risk of this happening?
Nervous now, angry later. As for your question, I'll pose another question I've posted before. Why do the other screw locations, four in total, never show problems allegedly related to over tightening while the eight others do? Are they screwing the inner four like surgeons while hiring orangutans to do the outer eight? No. The plastic around the other locations is too thin for the job at hand.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2015
- Messages
- 7
- Reaction score
- 2
- Age
- 72
Just found a crack on one of the screws. Not a hole yet but it sure is a crack. I never crashed it either.. Well i guess crazy glue it is [emoji1]
As far as I know there has not been one documented failure of a P3 due to those cracks. Yes, they should not be there, but they are. Dab on some superglue and enjoy your drone. DJI will take notice in due course and modify their design. Too late for us but not much we can do about it now 
Am I wrong? I suspect that the start up sequence of the motors which tighten the props may be applying a sudden surge of extra torque which is not present in the pre P3's which in turn is twisting the arm ends more than normal. After doing this a few hundred times it might be introducing the stress cracks.
Am I wrong? I suspect that the start up sequence of the motors which tighten the props may be applying a sudden surge of extra torque which is not present in the pre P3's which in turn is twisting the arm ends more than normal. After doing this a few hundred times it might be introducing the stress cracks.
As far as I know there has not been one documented failure of a P3 due to those cracks. Yes, they should not be there, but they are. Dab on some superglue and enjoy your drone. DJI will take notice in due course and modify their design. Too late for us but not much we can do about it now
Your entitled to your opinion but if we never mention anything and just settled for what's happening nothing would ever be resolved. I hope this thread blows up and I mean that in a good way. The only way DJI will get the message is if more of us speak on it.
It maybe too late for US it may not be...obviously there is an issue and it's more prevalent in the p3 than probably any other phantom platform. Why? I don't know but something needs to be said...JMO
The wobble people mentioned I realized it a few flights ago. I started to wonder if my props we're unbalanced.
Mind you...I checked them once and that was 30 flights ago. I managed to put them back on the dubro balancer and sure enough all 4 were way off balance. It was a pain in the @$$ to get them right especially, the hubs.
I took my bird up for a test flight a few days ago and I noticed the wobble was gone.
So what I'm I getting at:
Balance your props
Back out and Reset your torq screws
And if need be CG the cracks and seems(if you feel the need...)
We all know the plastic is in question...just some heads up tips
Mind you...I checked them once and that was 30 flights ago. I managed to put them back on the dubro balancer and sure enough all 4 were way off balance. It was a pain in the @$$ to get them right especially, the hubs.
I took my bird up for a test flight a few days ago and I noticed the wobble was gone.
So what I'm I getting at:
Balance your props
Back out and Reset your torq screws
And if need be CG the cracks and seems(if you feel the need...)
We all know the plastic is in question...just some heads up tips
Yep. As said previously, I would say my cracks starting appearing around the 9 hour time of use. There are going to be a lot more reports of this as people start racking up more hours on their P3s.
Blade - What is DJI's response on this? I'm afraid this is going to become a massive problem on their hands in very short time.
How many hours do you have on your P3? Check your flight logs and let us know....
Not that much, I just got it a week or so ago. Four hours or thereabouts, but I'm checking it regularly.
That's why I'm checking regularly. I believe I read about others who had cracks almost from new. I wonder how many factories these things are made in, or how many different production lines there are in the various factories.
All it takes is for one torque setting to be out on one assembly machine for the issue to be thrown up. Maybe all the rest are ok, but I don't know; I'm just thinking out loud.
Imagine if there are 20 assembly lines - if one torque wrench is out, will the rest of the assembly lines also be out causing cracks? Maybe not. But mine is ok so far. If mine had cracks, I'd be cross too.
All it takes is for one torque setting to be out on one assembly machine for the issue to be thrown up. Maybe all the rest are ok, but I don't know; I'm just thinking out loud.
Imagine if there are 20 assembly lines - if one torque wrench is out, will the rest of the assembly lines also be out causing cracks? Maybe not. But mine is ok so far. If mine had cracks, I'd be cross too.
Oso
Premium Pilot
Thanks for posting this. For some reason I had in my mind that you guys were opening the shell to do the gluing. It never occurred to me that you were just letting the glue "soak" into the seams of a closed shell.
I suppose we should all agree on the best glue to use to help others from melting the plastic and making a worse mess.
Oso
Premium Pilot
It seems to me that the flight time doesn't make too much difference. I mean the cracks could happen at any time. It seems like the consensus from these 218+ posts is that the torque from the new motors and/or unbalanced props is stressing that area of the arm beyond its design limits. Possibly to a much lower degree the screws are too tight, but that to me is not the root cause.
I would think that if you had badly unbalanced props they would stress that area enough to very quickly crack the shell. This could be with a couple of flights, yes?
More balanced props would not add to the stress as much, but repeated starts and stops of the motors would then be the main driver of the cracks, and that would take a little longer to appear. Possibly around the 9-10 hour mark as noted in the thread.
Both scenarios are certainly due to a poor/cheap shell design that can't handle its own components.
Without proactively gluing the shell, I don't think that any of us can avoid these cracks happening to us eventually, no matter how diligent we are with balance.
Last edited:
In all honesty, it's a good quad. But just make sure you have crazy glue handy.
