 Hey guys, welcome to Rotorat, I'm Lidryb. And I'm Joshua Bardwell. I got a question for you, Drip. You've been building quads a long time. If I asked you to give me some tips for how to build a quad good, you can give me some tips, right? Oh, hell yeah. You know, you gotta use a hot soldering iron. I don't wanna hear those. That's not why we're here today. We are here to give you some tips for things to do if you want to build a quad badly. How to ruin your drone build. There's some things that you might wanna watch out for out there. You know, sometimes these things, they were tried with the best of intention. You know, little ideas that someone had to reduce weight or make the build easier. But when the actual props hit the air, some of these things we found just straight up ruined your build. You're probably doing some of these things now and you might even think some of them are a good idea. Well, you're wrong and you're about to find out. Yeah, on my channel, I'm all like, what's up guys, it's Joshua Bardwell here. Then I come over and Rotorat and I'm like, yeah, could you smell? Your build sucks. Let's get started, Drew. Nylon standoffs. So most drone frames are built with pieces of carbon fiber. You tend to have like your main builds, your arms and your bottom plate and you have a top plate. And separating that, you've got standoffs. And those standoffs really need to be hard metal, like at least aluminum, right? Maybe steel, aluminum for weight, aluminum is a little more likely to strip out, but they need to be metal. There was a trend to do these nylon standoffs because it's so lightweight. There were a number of frames that shipped with nylon standoffs, but then what actually happens? They strip, they break. Your first crash, they break in half. They melt them with your soldering iron? Oh yeah, that too. It's actually just makes your drone explode. You're ruining your quad if you put nylon standoffs on it. You don't see it too often anymore, but there was a minute where a lot of frames were shipping with nylon standoffs. I'm actually speaking from personal experience here. I think this was the third drone frame that I ever bought. Was it that one with the spoiler on the back? No, it was the one after that. But it came with nylon standoffs. So this was like the third build I ever did. And the first flight out, just absolute explosion. I was like very disheartened. So nowadays you don't too often see drone frame itself being made with nylon standoffs, but something you do still see a lot is the stack being assembled with nylon standoffs, right? Yeah, no, that's a terrible idea. If you use nylon standoffs in your flight control stack, you are ruining your build. And the reason is that they'll break and they'll fall apart, not as fast as if they were frame standoffs. You need to use solid screws all the way through. And what I would like to see is for electronics manufacturers to stop including nylon standoffs. Specifically, the real problem child here is the female male standoff. So when you're screwing together these individual bits, the problem is in a hard crash, the male end will just shear off and then your electronics are just flopping around. And if it's your flight controller, you're gonna have a lot of problems there because now your gyro is flopping around and that means your quad is just gonna be erratic and crazy. What you really wanna do with the stack is use female, female nylon standoffs, right? Where it's really more of a nylon spacer. Basically all the way through, yeah, spacer, that's right. So you really want more of like a nylon spacer with a long metal screw. So this is something that more and more electronics manufacturers are doing. And I really hope that it just becomes this standard where instead of getting individual nylon bits, you get a set of long metal screws and nylon spacers that is gonna hold your stack very securely and it's gonna be very durable. That's not gonna break in a crash. Like I don't know if I've ever really seen that fail. That actually brings me to another way to ruin your quad cupture build. And I hadn't even thought of this until this very moment but putting a spoiler on the back of your quad cupture, really bad idea. Now I know what you're thinking, who would do that? Why would you put a spoiler on the back of your quad cupture? Well, so you might be a boy racer, kind of auto enthusiast. You put a spoiler on your car, seems like a good thing. You put a spoiler on your quad cupture. I'm not saying it's a terrible idea and no one should do it. Let's make, let's call this a reasonable category. How about let's call this unnecessary 3D printed parts. That's a good way to ruin your build. That is true. It adds weight, may actually take away from function. I'll admit, I'll admit Joshua isn't just making things up. Back when I was just first getting into this, I was getting into FPV and 3D printing at the same time and I was always looking for cute ways to intersect them and being an automotive enthusiast, I thought it'd be funny to put a spoiler on the back of my drone. So I actually 3D printed a bunch of plastic spoilers and I'd put them on to my drone every time and they almost always got broken when I would fly. So I would have to every time replace this. I don't know why I thought this was a, you need the extra downforce for grip. You need grip. The thing is I've never actually put a real spoiler on my car because I'm like, no, that's rice. Yeah, I would never do that. But when it came to my drone, I was like, oh yeah, let's just lean into it. But you know what? Before you guys get to all my case for doing something silly with a 3D printed spoiler, whatever, we've all done that. We've all done silly things. Joshua, Mr. Know-It-All himself, guru of drone education, he used to use a wood block to angle his GoPro. I'm not even kidding. He actually used a wooden one. Okay, first of all, that is not correct. It was a Mobius, not a GoPro. Oh, that's right. That's so much better. I couldn't afford a GoPro back then. I don't think, I don't know too many people are using wood. Because I also had wooden bumpers on the front and back to protect the bottom plate. But the thing is, this was number one before 3D printers were even invented. I mean, they probably were invented, but no one had one. And I definitely didn't have one. And I went out to the barn and I just looked around and I said, I need a freaking up tilt for my camera. And I just, I got on the saw and I come on up. You do deserve the credit for using what you have, right? Hack it, slash it, make it work. Stacking pin headers. Stacking pin, you know what I'm talking about? Stacking pin headers where on one of the boards, they got pins coming out the bottom. And on one of the boards, they got like a socket and they stack on top of each other. What's wrong with that? It's so convenient. You've got your four and one. You've got your flight controller and you just marry them together and it's great. You don't have to do any wiring. Ruin. Ruin. If you ever have to service your flight controller or if you ever have to service your drone, all you gotta do is pull the flight controller off. It's just so, it's just so easy. It's just very easy to maintain. Here's what's wrong with it. Number one, they have no give for vibration. If there's any vibration, those sockets, those receptacles, wallow out the pins, stop making contact, and then your VTX, your flight controller. And it's so hard to troubleshoot because like it'll kind of work, but then as soon as you take off, your quad just falls out of the air, your video cuts out. It always happens eventually. The other problem with it is, especially with smaller flight controllers where they don't have the pads broken out. If you decide like you shear a pin and you want to direct solder it, there's like, it's very hard to find anything to solder to if you wanted to. So yeah, I fully agree with you. I've tried out some stacks that had this and I've always had a bad experience. It either breaks and it basically renders the components useless, or yeah, it creates weird problems where there's intermittent connection. Or I mean, even just the fact that it translates more vibration to the flight controller. If you've got your flight controller soft mounted, but you're four in one ESC hard mounted, all those vibrations are just gonna get through that rigid connection. But I gotta say, this is one of those ideas that seemed like a pretty cool innovative idea. It's one of those things that was tried that could make your build a lot simpler, a lot easier. On paper, it seemed pretty clever, but in reality, it created way more problems than it solved. So there's no harm in trying things. I love seeing manufacturers trying out different things, but ultimately some of them just ended up not being such a good idea. Okay, okay, hang on, hang on though. Tiny caveat, there are some 20 millimeter and 16 millimeter stacks where this kind of works. And I think it's because the mass of the board is so much less and the mass of the quad is so much less that it kind of seems to work. Yeah, yeah, that's worth saying, hey, if you're flying around like a tiny whoop class drone, I know like the beta FPV drones, they stack their VTX like that and I've never really see it be a problem on that. So on the smaller drones, it's not so much of a problem. You wanna know what else ruins your build? Ribbon cables, okay? Ribbon cables between the ESC and the flight controller, the ribbon cables do not deal well with shock and vibration. They wear out, they tear, it always happens. So essentially don't use the header pins, don't use the ribbon cables, just stick with the wire connectors. Good old wires, plastic JST connectors, direct solder if you really want it to be tough. But I don't really have too much problem with the JST plastic connectors, right? They've been fine. That seems to work thirsty dang well. The next way to ruin your drone build is the slammed build. And I know it's so cool where you just try and get the bottom plate and the top plate as like close together as possible. Like it makes the drone just look awesome. It does make the frame itself pretty durable. But the expenses, that build is a pain in the butt. You're trying to keep everything as slim as possible and you're going to have to compromise somewhere. And it's very likely that you're gonna end up shorting something out. Carbon fiber is conductive and when you're keeping things that close, one little solder ball touching the carbon fiber and you fried all your electronics. Having a low profile drone certainly has its advantages. So when I'm talking like 20 millimeter standoffs, maybe even 15 millimeter standoffs, I could see why you want to get that low CG. But I've seen builders attempt to use like 10, five millimeter standoffs, go for that like ultra low profile thing. And as cool as it looks, just kind of ruins your build. Yeah, I totally agree. I've seen people jump through all kinds of hoops to get their flight controller and their ESC so like one micron away from each other. We could fit it into some ultra slammed frame. And like just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. You're way past the point where the cost benefit is where the ratio is way off. You're getting very little additional benefit and it's a huge hassle. And the chances of short circuiting it are much higher and the maintenance is just a pain in the butt. If you like building ships in bottles, more power to you, build an ultra slam build. Yeah, I guess that's something. I mean, it's all about like enjoying the hobby. It's like cars, you know? Some people when they modify their car, you want to lower it. I've lowered my car, it makes it handle a lot better. And then some people, they want to slam that, they cut springs, they move, purchase, whatever they got to do to basically put the frame on the ground. And it looks cool, but go over a speed bump wrong and you've totaled your whole freaking car. 15 millimeters, that's what I say. That's your minimum. That's the number, 15 millimeters, absolute minimum. Okay, so what else you got? You got anything else? How else can you ruin? That's kind of everything I can do. You got something? Titanium motor screws. Wait, no, but seriously, what's wrong with titanium ones? That's really, titanium is really lightweight. It's really strong. And I mean, if you skid it on the ground, it sparks, right? Why wouldn't you want titanium motor screws? It's not strong. It's not. It's lightweight. Titanium is pretty tough. I thought titanium was like the strongest metal. I mean, obviously there are alloys of different metals, but titanium is not as strong as like a high grade steel. So titanium screws are okay for standoffs, but definitely not for motor screws. You'll break the screws and your motors will come flying off. I don't know. It's not worth the wait. Because titanium, I am not a metallurgist, but my understanding is that titanium is like, it's brittle in a way. Like if you could even have aluminum motor screws and like aluminum kind of bends and deforms, but holds on and titanium will just like, I don't know, all the metallurgists, metallurgists in the comments are gonna tell me why I'm wrong, but titanium motor screws, they will crack and break and your motor will come off. Steel will not. I didn't really know this was a thing. I guess if you built your drone with titanium screws. Ruin. Ruin. Build a five inch quad under 250 grams. Ruin. Yeah, that's a trend, right? That's kind of one of those new things that you're seeing more and more of. That 250 gram benchmark has kind of become the cutoff point for where a lot of countries say regulations do or don't apply. If you're under 250 grams, a lot of the regulations that countries are starting to impose on drones don't always apply. So people are trying to find ways to make it lightweight. I mean, I've never even bought one of those. You're just giving up way too. I mean, I'm impressed with the fact that people are doing it. I hope that I don't eventually live in a world where that's what I have to fly, but they are so fragile. But how do they fly? I mean, I've never even flown one of these things. Like, does it even feel like a true five inch? Feels like a bigger three inch, if that makes any sense. How much does a GoPro even weigh? Isn't a GoPro like 180 grams? Yeah, GoPro, no, you can't have a GoPro on it. If you're lucky, you'll get a Caddx Vista. Then what's, if you're not carrying a GoPro, what's the point in making it five inch? Yeah, exactly. That is exactly my question. You build a five inch under 250 grams. You give up so much to get it there. Meanwhile, you could build a really damn good flying, even a four inch, but definitely a damn good flying three inch and have plenty of power and weight to play with. I guess at the risk of back pedaling, we're lucky that this community is full of people that wanna try things, that wanna innovate, that want to try and figure out ways to meet the ever changing rules that are being thrust upon us. So I'm glad that there's people trying things and maybe there is a future where you could have a good performing sub 250 gram five inch quad and there are performance benefits. I guess just right now, it's not really there. If you're building a drone and you wanna ruin it, I would say at this point, sub 250 is a great way to ruin your five inch drone, but maybe in the future. Don't stop innovating, but if you're looking for build tips, don't. You know what it's like, Drew? It's like those solar powered cars where they do these solar endurance races and the car is like, it doesn't even look like a car and it's got these solar panels on top and it can barely hold one person and oh, I drove for 10 hours and 500 miles. The drone, I'm driving with the time. Right, and it's like, okay, cool, you did it. Good for you, but I ain't taking that thing to the grocery store, ruined. Okay, all right, well, I guess we're done here. Yeah, I think those are the most common ways that I see people that screwing up their builds and having a bad experience. I can't really think of anything else that someone might run into. Yeah, I'm just looking at my build here trying to think of like, obviously I don't do anything. What is that? Oh God, what is that on the arms? What? Oh my God, what am I looking at here? It's electrical tape, it's red electrical tape. That's my signature. Oh! All right guys, that's gonna do it for six ways to ruin your drone build. Again, these are just some things that, you know, they were tried with some good intentions or maybe they could turn into something viable in future, but right now, if you're building your first drone, you might wanna stay away from some of these things. That being said, this is all done in the spirit of good fun. Please, nobody take it too seriously. I would hate to think that there's somebody out there who is building their first build and is like, no, road to right hates us. No, no, it's all in good fun and hopefully it's taken that way. I'm sure that no one in the comments will misinterpret this video at all. Leave your frustrated comments in an orderly fashion. If we upset you, make sure to dislike this video. If you enjoyed this, hit the like button and subscribe to find out about more things that you're doing that we think is dumb. Oh, the shade is real. We're posting episodes every Monday. Hope to see you next time. I'm the Dribb. I'm Joshua Bargwell. We'll see you next time on Road to Riot. You know what I don't like? And you're gonna hate me. What? Gamer chairs.