Trex 450 Pro Clone

[Dave]

Purchased the first item tonight on ebay, 1 DS410 servo have bids in for two others and for a DS520. Already have the motor and the esc from a previous purchase. Will push the button at CNC later tonight.

Dave


Edit 8/14/2010
Waiting on parts still to come in.......maybe today ;D
Edit 8/14/2010
Therrrrre herrrrre
Will post up some pictures and review of parts later tonight.

[Dave]

Well like I said earlier today the parts came in.....
After a quick look only found one part that may have to be returned due to mfg. damage, a flybar paddle. It appears that when the holes were drill that the drill was off center and caused the hole to crack out on one side.
Anyways here is what came in.









Like I said earlier I took a very quick look at all the parts as I unpacked them and only found one thing damaged. The next step will be to completely disassemble all assembled parts, check them out then reassemble and loctite. Will not bore everyone with the dissemble process unless I find something way out of the ordinary.

Dave

[Dave]

Well like I said I would not bother to bore you with the disassemble, but it went well.

I have now started to rebuild everything and found one thing I really liked about this heli and one thing I really disliked.

This is what I really liked.

I thought at first the bolt holes were plastic but after disassemble found that they had inserts in each hole that ran from one side to the other

What did I dislike.

The way the tail is made. In order to replace the belt you must take the tail completly apart. I have put up a post in General Talk to see if he can fix this for me. Would like to see if he can have a part made so that all of the screws are on one side to ease the process of replacing the belt.

Here is the motor and main gear mount. Still have to figure out where to mount the esc and run the servo wiring.


Edit 8/19/10
Got the last of the servos in today and will start there installation tomorrow along with the esc and the rx. Have three DS410's for the cyclic and a DS520 for the tail. Trying to get a GY401 also on ebay. Right now I have it but there are two more days left.

[Dave]

Well just picked up a used GY401 over on ebay for $60 bucks. Have all the electronics now can start to install.

One little word of advise to all you new builders.
Make sure to sand down all of the openings on a carbon frame.
Why you say, these frames are press stamped out and it leaves very sharp edges. If you pass any of your wiring through these openings and they aren't sanded down you might as well take a knife and cut them and save yourself sometime in the future of having to remove it due to vibration cutting through the wire on these sharp edges.

Dave

[19000rpm]

Looking good so far Dave

[Dave]

Well I got the servo arms on order a couple of day ago.
Will they get here today ;D. If they don't man it is going to be a long three day weekend.

Dave

[Dave]

Man now that is what I call service. Placed the order, for servo arms and some extra hardware with High Fly Heli.com late Wednesday night. They shipped the stuff Thursday and it got here today. There was even a hand written note in the package from Gregg Stingle,the owner thanking me for the order. You can bet I will go back to these guys again. They specialize in Align helis and parts.

Have been teaching one of my grandsons to ride a bike and working on the 450. Will get a few photos up later on with some comments.

Hope to have her up and in the air before the end of the holiday.

Dave

[19000rpm]

That's great service. Good luck with getting her in the air this weekend.

[Dave]

They do have great service. Invited Gregg to check us out and join us, well he did and he is now a member. Guys if your looking for Trex parts you need to check these guys out, www.highflyheli.com. Everything they sale is Align

Anyways here is the latest photos on the build.







Be sure to set the servo arms to ninety before you install them because you can't get to them to remove the arms after they are installed as pictured in the three photos above.

In the photos below be sure to install all spacers.


Main gear spacer


Main gear spacer installed.

Shaft spacer, very important.


Shaft spacers.


These two spacers are installed on the shaft and slide all the way up to the spacer that is welded to the shaft.


What you see here is the spacer that is welded to the shaft with the two supplied extra spacers.

There is a chance that you may not need the two extra spacer or you may only need one. They are different thicknesses. In my case both were required to prevent this, see below.


Gear rub. Without the spacers the main gear was rubbing against the tail boom mount housing.

With the spacers install you get perfect gear alignment and no rubbing, as pictured below.



Next up......servo wire routing, esc installation and gyro installation.

[akphill]

Well Dave I was wondering how the 450 build was coming along ;D

hope it is going OK

[shakycyclic]

And please, some details on the servo setup. I just got myself the El Cheapo EXI450 (aka Align clone SE V2), waiting on the servos, yeah.

Point? I'm taking notes, bossman!

[r/c basher]

Sept 18, 2010 16:29:56 GMT -6 akphill said:

Well Dave I was wondering how the 450 build was coming along ;D

hope it is going OK

Me too? Looking forward to a maiden video.

[Dave]

Hey guys just got back in from the bbq contest and my a$s is whipped.

As far as the build goes all is on hold until I decided on a new esc, not real happy with the one I have as it gets way to warm for me.

shakycyclic
The cyclic are all Align DS410's and the tail is a DS520. So far I do not have them setup in the tx, waiting on the new esc. One thing you do want to make sure to do is to get all four setup at the 90 degrees before you install them because you can not get to the screws after you install them to reset the arms. I did a lot of searching out here and found Finless had the best advise when setting up the servos so you might want to go to HeliFreak and check out his vids on the 450 also they were a great help to me being my first build.

Good luck with yours and if you have any questions let me know and I will see if I can point you in the right direction.

Dave

[McKrackin]

Nice build thread Dave.
Nice looking heli too.

[Dave]

Thanks McKrackin
It is going slow but thats OK by me
If I can ever find an esc I want it should all be complete except for the swash setup and the first hover.

Dave