Arms and Motors

In this section we will walk through the assembly of the drone arms and motor mounting

Motor Mount Assembly

The four motor mounts go on the end of the arms (carbon fiber tubes). Each one consists of two small carbon fiber plates, four tube clamps (the arch-shaped parts), and four long M2.5 screws with locknuts (with an elastic ring inside). Additionally, you need the motor itself and four short, silver M3 screws contained in a small ziploc bag.

Parts necessary for mounting motors to drone arms

Be sure to use the right screws for motor mounting. These screws are short and silver. They can be found in Box 4 (soft, black case). There are longer screws in the frame box (Box 1) that will fit into the motor, but they should not be used. They are long enough to damage the motor windings. The photo below shows the shorter screw that should be used.

Use the shorter M3 silver screw for motor mounting

Go ahead and unbox your motors, but for now, we are only concerned with the motors themselves. In an upcoming section, we will cover installing the prop adapters and making sure your motor rotation is correct.

KDE motor unboxed and ready for mounting

The first step is to mount the motors onto the small carbon plates. You need a carbon plate and four M3 screws for this. Make sure the three motor wires extend from the short sides of the carbon fiber plate. Repeat this step until you have all four motors mounted. Make sure you tighten the screws appropriately because it will be hard to access the screws later.

Be careful to not overtighten the screws. They will come to a hard stop when threaded all the way. If you try too hard you may end up stripping the head of the screw. It's also a best practice to check the screws before each mission.

Motors mounted to carbon plate with M3 screws and supplied hex tool

For the next step, we need four tube clamps, the other carbon plate, four long M2.5 screws, and the locknuts. The screws are black and go through the holes in the corners of the carbon fiber plate. Then on each side, two tube clamps are added onto the screws. The round carbon fiber arms will fit between these clamps.

Tube clamp assembly with long M2.5 screws

Finally, the carbon fiber plate goes over the screws and a locknut goes on the end. Tighten the nuts slightly by hand, so they don't fall off. Follow this process for all four motors.

Don't fully tighten the nuts with a wrench yet, because we have to put the carbon fiber tubes through first, and then we will tighten them around the tube.

Motor assembly ready for mounting to frame arms

Arm Assembly

You can now insert the round carbon fiber tubes between the tube clamps. The motor mounts should be on the end of the tube. The tube should extend slightly beyond the motor mount, but just a few millimeters should be enough. Once the tube is inserted, you can tighten the screws using the provided H2.0 hex tool and 5.5BOX tool.

The motor wires should be on the opposite side of the carbon fiber tubes. These wires will later plug into extension cables that will come from inside the carbon tubes.

Tube clamps nicely tightened with tools provided in the VRC kit

Follow this procedure for all four motors and arms. We'll be using these in an upcoming section where we'll mount the arms between the top and bottom plates of the frame. In the next section, we will begin assembling the bottom part of the VRC drone frame.

Motors and arms fully assembled