Page 68 - Build Your Own Quadcopter_ Power Up Your Designs with the Parallax Elev-8

Chapter 3: Building the Ele v-8 47

Apply Heat-Shrink Tubing to Motor and ESC Leads
Heat-shrink tubing will protect the solder joints and prevent unintended electrical contact.
As shown in Figure 3.20, the tubing is shrunk over both a female EC3 wire extension
connector and a male EC3 connector.
This protection keeps the leads from accidentally making contact with each other, yet
allows connectors to be plugged and unplugged as needed when testing motor connections
in a later step.

note: Using this technique of applying shrink tubing might leave a very small amount of exposed
connector. However, there is a very small chance that any exposed areas can inadvertently short.
The following approach is quick and efficient and will speed your build.
1. Locate the 27-in (68.6-cm) length of ∕16-in (0.2-cm) (black tubing. Measure and cut it
3
into ∕8-in (1.6-cm) pieces, which will be about 42 pieces total.
5
2. Slide shrink tubing over the male and female EC3 connectors soldered to the wire
extension leads.
3. Plug in the opposite connector from the motor assembly. Position the tubing to cover
both connectors and solder joints.
4. Carefully apply heat to all the shrink tubing on all of the connectors.
5. Leave the wire extensions plugged into the motors, but unplug the wire extensions
from the ESCs for now.

Motor-Mount Assembly
In this step, you will attach the motor mounts, motors, and landing gear legs to the booms.
Do not attach the propellers to the motors yet!

Figure 3.20 Heat-shrink tubing over female and male EC3 connectors.