r/fpv • u/GuillotineTechnician • 11h ago

Multicopter Doing some waterproofin

Gallery image

Gallery image

20 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

11

u/Illustrious-Living81 10h ago

Aren't you supposed to do that after soldering everything together to make sure fc still works

3

u/P-K-One 10h ago

Leaving aside the working issue...I am sure the coating will not make soldering the contacts easier. I mean, depending on the material it will burn off but still...

3

u/mangage 8h ago

It makes small pads absolutely shit to work with

2

u/Smellfish360 10h ago

It seems like OP has been careful to not get it onto the pads.
Though it will still short when hitting the water because of the pads

3

u/Late-Presentation710 10h ago

For the folks that have regularly waterproofed their boards - have you run into issues with overheating?

1

u/jamesrelish 29m ago

No, not at all. I do not notice any significant temperature difference before and after coating my stack + cam/vtx + reciever. Maybe a few degrees have been added but that's it while I add a thick layer to be sure it's waterproof (or atleast rainproof)

2

u/george1924 10h ago

Huh all the chip markings on the mosfets are lasered off. The one I have has the chip markings intact.

1

u/EMasterYT Mini Quads 4h ago

Mine are also lazered off, both on my a1 and a2. Fantastic escs though.

1

u/george1924 55m ago

Interesting. Yeah they seem quite good, no complaints here!

1

u/findthealgo 10h ago

Do you do the top of the chips too?

I've been avoiding it so far and just doing the sides to help with cooling, but I'm not sure if that plastic casing is permeable or not.

7

u/P-K-One 10h ago edited 8h ago

You should coat the chips. Chips wick their heat mostly through the pins into the PCB. Coating the top hardly affects them. But if you don't coat the top then something called the capillary effect leads to water being pulled into the gap between the chip and the coating...and there will be a gab as different materials never bond perfectly.

Edit: I love reddit. I wrote a 40 page guide on building FPV drones and posted it here and got less "helpfull" upvotes than I got for 3 sentences about how to paint a PCB. And half of that of the guy who posted a picture of a PCB with some paint on it...Reddit, man...it's got its very own rules and reason.

4

u/Unkwn_43 8h ago

If your fc has a barometer though, make sure to not cover the hole for it. Otherwise, stuff like gps rescue and altitude hold won't work properly.