Warning to all X5 owners

[The Editor]

The problem is a lot of flyers have come from the Phantoms of this world that will bounce and take a knock. The Inspire simply won't - nor were they built to.
The same way that a Freely Alta with an FS7 or mini Alexa slung underneath would not take to well to a 10 feet landing.
If you crash, they will break.

 

[x5yo]

The inspire is like driving a ferrari in the sense that if you screw up, be prepared for a big repair bill.
If I scrape the door on a ferrari, its going to cost the price of a small hatchback to get it painted properly.

These are things you should know and accept before you buy one. Even if it was stronger, 3.5kg machine in the air vs gravity and physics is going to end badly.

 

[burlbark]

N

I keep looking at the pictures at the top and I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be judging. Are you talking about the silver washer like disc? Is that the part you feel is too thin?

No... Can you see the crack in the picture?

The Yaw motor is secured to the anti-vibration plate by that piece of aluminum with the crack around it. That aluminum is injection molded and is not strong enough to reliably secure the yaw motor and weight of the gimbal. Vibration alone will eventually fatigue it and cause it to fail. Just like the injection molded j-arms on the Phantom 3 that some users have reported failing from flight. Now imagine 3-4x the weight on a part even thinner than the Phantom 3 j-arm and you will see the problem.

I am sure someone will cnc a new aftermarket part for existing owners. Possibly even 3d printed plastic would have sufficient strength with enough material.

 

[m00se]

I thought the heat shrink would be enough,

Can we assume that you have learnt the difference between a "heat sink" and "heat shrink" also?

 

[m00se]

The problem is a lot of flyers have come from the Phantoms of this world that will bounce and take a knock. The Inspire simply won't - nor were they built to.
The same way that a Freely Alta with an FS7 or mini Alexa slung underneath would not take to well too well to a 10 feet landing.
If you crash, they will break.

A multi rotor should always be landed as if landing it on eggshells. Anything more than that will always stress it somewhere.
Heck, at least the inspire has a decent landing gear, unlike the bloody phantom that just topples over and eats your props for breakfast.

I have only ever toppled two drones upon landing. 1 was a high end drone, and the barometer got fooled by a freak incident where the wind blowing over the top of a "bowl" for want of a better word seemed to create low pressure inside the bowl, causing the mag to think it had risen several meters, this caused a thumping 10m decent which was by that point unavoidable. In this case a well designed landing gear took the shock and nothing was damaged.

The other is the bloody phantom 2 I have, that in any degree of wind is almost impossible to land without it flipping over and chewing up the props............

 

[John Alan]

I see the pics... I understand what you implying... yes it could be a bit more robust...
BUT...
These things are not made to be abused... in the slightest...
They are like Indy cars that come apart at the slightest bump...
Not a Baja racer you can fling off a hillside, pancake in the rocks and keep going...
And the stories I read up above sounds like OP errors resulting in damage...
And yes it's expensive when you wreck one... comes with owning one...

I second what The Editor and Moose said up above...

 

[burlbark]

I see the pics... I understand what you implying... yes it could be a bit more robust...
BUT...
These things are not made to be abused... in the slightest...
They are like Indy cars that come apart at the slightest bump...
Not a Baja racer you can fling off a hillside, pancake in the rocks and keep going...
And the stories I read up above sounds like OP errors resulting in damage...
And yes it's expensive when you wreck one... comes with owning one...

I second what The Editor and Moose said up above...

I know all about folding things up.... I had a motor mount break on my 800 last week that cost me a pretty penny. The motor mount broke from fatigue midflite. This was on the 3rd flight of the day.

If they don't fix this yaw motor support they will be dealing with a huge amount of preventable losses. This will fatigue and fail at an alarming rate. I called this on the Vision motors with solid leads and I see it plain as day here. I sure hope they jump on this quick.

 

[m00se]

I know all about folding things up.... I had a motor mount break on my 800 last week that cost me a pretty penny. The motor mount broke from fatigue midflite. This was on the 3rd flight of the day.

If they don't fix this yaw motor support they will be dealing with a huge amount of preventable losses. This will fatigue and fail at an alarming rate. I called this on the Vision motors with solid leads and I see it plain as day here. I sure hope they jump on this quick.

out of interest, how much flight time did you have on the 800?

 

[Ruckusman]

you're looking at the yaw assembly which has been disassembled. The motor hangs below the black hub assembly, which has the crack in it, it is ridiculously thin.

For anyone being told that replacement only, no repair, check with your consumer protection department of your government and be prepared to make a lot of noise about this.

Also check the thread on rcgroups, the DJI rep has stated that this may be an isolated quality control issue.

DJI need to be accountable for the quality of their products, so be prepared to take whatever legal action is available to you.

 

[Robcurcio]

I've noticed you posting this analysis on other forums and wonder what you hope to achieve.

I would disagree with your statement that 'I don't need to be a mechanical engineer' - surely that is exactly what you would need to be to make any valid comments about the materials DJI have used in the X5. And again '. . .my qualifications bear no significance whatsoever' - of course they do, if you are not qualified your findings have zero substance.

This is just scaremongering with no scientific backup apart from a few calculations you've made on the back of a coaster.

Or like in your case, ignorance is bliss.

 

[Fink]

I've noticed you posting this analysis on other forums and wonder what you hope to achieve.

I would disagree with your statement that 'I don't need to be a mechanical engineer' - surely that is exactly what you would need to be to make any valid comments about the materials DJI have used in the X5. And again '. . .my qualifications bear no significance whatsoever' - of course they do, if you are not qualified your findings have zero substance.

This is just scaremongering with no scientific backup apart from a few calculations you've made on the back of a coaster.

This. This right here.

 

[Ruckusman]

This. This right here.

Love the replies like these because they keep pushing it to the top - works for me

 

[burlbark]

out of interest, how much flight time did you have on the 800?

No more than 15 minutes.... to be fair this 800 is not a DJI product. The end of the video/recent post on my facebook page shows the motor mount breaking.... Security Check Required

 

[harvey288]

hi guys new to the forum,
i crashed my i1 and x5 a little more than a month ago, inspire one is perfectly fine however the gimbal has torn of above the top motor where the thin metal part is, shortly after the crash i emailed dji and they said to send it over with the drone and said nothing about the fact that they do not/cannot fix cameras, however I didn't get around to sending it to them and still haven't, so what do you think i should do, will they shaft me if i spend 75 quid sending it to them or do you think i have a case as i have clearly stated that the gimbal is broken?

 

[PB30X]

HARD LANDING!! NO evidence to prove negligence or a proper landing.. What is obvious, is DONT DO HARD LANDINGS, unless of course you care to share all experiences to including flying into trees etc, etc.. Someone makes a mistake and suddenly equipment is a POS!! Love this[emoji13]! If it is defective, and cheap manufacturing this should be interesting and handled appropriately, but I'm not buying the LANDING SCENERIO[emoji6] He Said, She Said!!

 

[JustBlaze]

FWIW, I had an I1pro crash after only 1 day of owning it (Recently upgraded from p3) due to what was apparently w calibration issue which cause it to constantly veer left no matter what I did. There was Extensive gimbal and camera mount damage (it really is held together by tin foil inside lol) as well as a broken rotor lock. Was fixed and returned within 2 weeks. No charge, no questions.

 

[burlbark]

Any update on the fix? There are another half dozen or so that have failed and some in transport.

Here is the facebook link Facebook

 

[harvey288]

Any update on the fix? There are another half dozen or so that have failed and some in transport.

Here is the facebook link Facebook

link doesnt work buddy

 

[damoncooper]

Feathered landings only with the Inspire. It would be nice to think the shock absorbers worked to allow a multi-G drop but unfortunately that's not the case.

Might be a good 3rd party add-on product idea though.

Those shock absorbers on high end RC cars and motorized camera dollies might be the kind of thing that would be needed.

 

[RaptorMan]

It doesn't take much of a drop to produce peak accelerations of 10g's. It's not so much how fast it's going as how fast it stops and unless you're landing on a feather bed chances are the copter will stop in a very short distance resulting in high g's.

But, it does sound like DJI/Zenmuse under engineered the mount and that it should be beafed up. I'd guess they were worried about the weight penalty of the heavier camera/lenses and tried to make the mount as light as possible to compensate -- looks like they went to light.

My ballpark guesstimate is that a more robust mount would weigh about 50-100g more which would likely compromise flight time by about 20-30 seconds.


Brian