Beam E4 Build Blog....

[jiberjaber]

Well after having a chat with Andy at Evorc I have plumped for a Beam E4, collected it from Rob and I have decided to put a little bit of a thread together covering the build.

I spent a good few hours on Friday trying to convince myself I didnt need one, looking through the Beam forums on most of the US heli forums for a reason why not to buy it, given that the colonial cousins will shout from the roof tops if there is the slightest thing wrong...

The result was I could only find two gremlins, one concerning the tail pitch arm screw and the other concerning the mixing arm screw, both of which are prevented by a good dose of loctite

So after looking over the threads and videos from Finless I plumped for one on Friday afternoon! £188 from Andy at Evorc.com.

I am planning on transfering most of my Trex kit over to the Beam, so that will be HS-65HB servos, Jazz 40-16-18 ESC, GY401, Spectrum 6200 receiver and Futaba 3154 on the tail.

I also decided to get a new motor for this heli, I went for the new Scorpian 2221-6 which is meant to be a bit nuts, so might review that after I have built and flown the heli

There is a copy of the manual online for anyone who wants to check it out, plus a few other bit of information:

http://www.beamheliusa.com/

Anyway, it was late when I got back tonight, so no building today (or tomorrow as I have stuff on in the evening).... but here's some pics of whats in the box so far:

The box itself is no bigger than a shoe box, it is truely in kit form:


Looking inside reveals everything packaged up in to labeld bags ready for assembly:



First inspection was of the canopy, plastic with a black visor and grey under belly. There are a couple of moldings in the upper part for the CCPM servo arms and it is secured to the heli by two holes towards the rear, just like the Trex 450:



There are a few branded parts in the box, notably the black skids and tail boom, the boom text makes an interesting statement, " Beam 402 Best Expert Acquired Man" !! LOL




The frame is black carbon fibre, looks like an interesting design - cant wait to get in to putting it together:



The heli has some serious CNC going on, not come across a non-CNC main part yet (except the main gear).

The tail case is a one piece design, after hunting around the shed floor often for screws on my Trex tail case and my nix tail being smashed up in a crash, I am glad to see this one piece design.




From my first inspection the head is also a quality bit of kit, some nice aesthetics of the angles and radius of the parts with a laser etched Beam logo.



This is continued in the washout base as well.



The swash is a two part design with the bearings held in with 4 retaining screws.



Main gear and tail share the same connection to the main shaft, just like in the EP100 & EP200 heli's from Gaui. Apparently this reduces the flight noise and is more efficient. I dont think I will notice the latter, but will be interested to hear a difference.

[jiberjaber]

The ETC bag contains some pinions, the battery tray, some foam for the battery tray and also some velcro strapping. I recon there are a few other goodies in there, but I decided not to open it just yet



The kit also comes with a set of 325 blades, which I think are fibre blades, reports from stateside claim them to be very good. They are white top and pink (!) bottomed, so should fit in here in the land of pink shirts that is Essex (Please note I am Northern and therefore do not own a pink shirt!)



Add to this the Scorpion motor I have also recieved it should be a nice flier. I was impressed with the case the motor came in, beats the align 'servo' style case, but will it be as useful?




Let the build commence, I will try and fill in here the pictures etc

[Dashik]

Nice! Should keep you out of trouble for a few hours at least

[GizmoB73]

Looking forward to more, keep up the build blog.

[jiberjaber]

So the build has started Everything (apart from what I got out last night) is packed in to bags in the order of assembly in the manual, which seems to be one of the standard ways of supplying kits now.

Finally got down to the shed this evening at about 7PM and packed in at 11:30, eye's are tierd and neck aches!



So I set about from the beginning of the manual, first off the upper bearing block.



To this is fitted the carbon anti-rotation bracket with two socket screws and the canopy posts with two countersunk pozi screws.



I checked the bearing and it was loctited in - but in the process of checking it, I obviously pushed it out, so I have added a bit of green loctite to hold it in.



I gave the other bearing block a quick push and it is in OK, I decided not to push it out and add new loctite given that it sits with the bearing pointing upwards so should be retained if the worst happened.

The motor mount (on the left of the picture below) is quite substantial, much thicker than that for the Trex.



Next was the tail belt tensioner set. (sorry it's a bit blured this one)



The pullys remind me of larger versions of the ones found on the Gaui EP200, they are fixed to the cross member by a socket screw each. A brass washer sits between each pully and the cross member.

[jiberjaber]

Next to assemble was the battery tray.

This comes with a two cross members attached to a long carbon plate with some holes and notches to retain velcro straps in.

It is secured to the cross members by 4 machine screws.

Not quite sure why countersunk screws were not used, however there is a foam pad supplied to fit on to the battery tray, which should prevent any nasty screw/battery interaction and provide some resistance to tension the velcro strap down on to.



There is also a nice CNC'd tail boom clamp. This has a nice radiused 'trumpet' finish (I am sure there must be an engineering term for this!) with a gap at the bottom to compress on to the boom. There are carbon plates for the top and bottom gyro mounts. The larger plate goes on the bottom.

I think I will be going for a bottom mounted gyro install as per my previous Trex to avoid any gyro decapitations.




Now most of the components are ready to be fitted to the frame. I decided to mount stuff to the left hand side of the frame and then fit the right hand side.

Everything is held on with socket head screws with nice natural coloured cup washers.





One slight issue was with the bottom bearing mount, as it was blind threaded holes, I think there must have been some swarf in the bottom which made screwing the socket heads in a little hard towards the end.

Next it was time to add the other frame to the build.




An interesting method is used to tighten the boom clamp. The clamp itself is held in the frame using six socket heads with cup washers. The tightening of the clamps is achieved by two extra long socket heads which go through one side (bottom left when viewed from rear) and in to the other half of the clamps. An interesting version of a boom clamp.

[jiberjaber]

So now to the bottom half of the heli.

This consists of a carbon base plate with 3 cross members which secure to the base plate by machine screws and loctite.

The front cross member has slotted holes in the base plate but the other two cross members towards the rear are not slotted.

The legs are secured using 2 self tappers per leg, the skids push in and have lose fitting end caps which were CA'ed in to the end of the skids. No CA was used to secure the skids in the legs as they were quite a tight fit.

The base plate was offered up to the frame and secured with last 4 socket screws and caps from the fixng kit for this section of the build. Two longer socket screws are fitted to the rear, which go through the end caps for the boom braces.




It was whilst building the bottom part that I realised I had missed the lower cross member which the pitch and aileron servos attach to, so this was fitted at this time as well.

There are plenty of tie wrap holes for strapping kit to the heli, quite a number are evident on the base plate.

[Dashik]

Looks nice so far

[jiberjaber]

Next the swash.

This came nearly all assembled. The interesting thing about this swash is that it is serviceable, so you can replace bearings and the nylon guides inside it.



It came in two parts, the centre and the outer parts seperated.



The inner was pushed up the inside of the outer and retained with 3 machine screws and loctite.



The swash has a Beam etched on it.



The inner and outer balls are then added.

[Butuz]

I like all the laser etching - gives a real nice aura of quality to things!

Butuz

[jiberjaber]

So on to the head.

I had to take this off the main shaft (5mm dia - same as Trex). I checked over all the bolts for loctite, which was added at factory, so I topped them up

The mast collar was a PIA to remove, it is clamped to the mast by 2 grub screws in to a recessed part of the shaft. During fitting by the factory, they had tightened it down, it would have been better if they didnt fit it at all.

It took a good bit of heat and mole grips to remove it over the resultant burrs on the shaft. I polished the shaft back to new with a bit of wet and dry.

The balls were added to the blade grips, mixer arms and washout base.

Anyway - on to the flybar cage. This is in keeping with the design of the rest of the CNC parts, nice rounded shapes and flats where needed.

The two flybar arms are held together using cage ends in the tradidtional sense. Each cage end has a counter sunk socket into which the arm goes. I also added the flybar arm to mixer links.

I noticed when setting the length that it helped to get both lengths the same if one link was put on the opposite to the other - hope that makes sense, I could do a drawing if anyone wants it clarifying better

These are then secured using socket screws and loctite.



In also noticed that each link eyelet had a molding mark on the top which made lengths a little hard to measure with the verniers, so I sanded each eyelet to facilitate measurement of link lengths.

The flybar cage was then fitted to the head and the flybar fitted, with approc 79mm on each side of the cage.



The head was then fitted back on to the main shaft and connected up to the inner swash.



The whole lot was then fitted to the frame.



I had to open out the anti-rotation bracket somewhat with a flat file so that the elevator swash ball could move freely up and down in it.

Last, and somewhat out of build order I assembled the main and tail gear.



This consists of a one-way bearing fitted to a autorotation hub which is secured to the main gear using 6 machine screws which are recessed in to the main gear.

Above the one way bearing is a standard bearing and in to all this is the autorotation sleave fits, which is similar to the Trex V2 main gear assembly (apart from the additional bearing and a few more screws).



What is different with this heli is that the tail drive is taken straight off the main shaft and the lower jesus bolt is above the main gear.

So that is as far as I have got tonight and I am knackered.

Left to do is the tail and boom and the electronics. Not sure how much I will get done tomorrow night yet.

One thing I did notice is that the boom and main shafts appear to be similar sizes to the Trex so tail case and swash/head may be a option for anyone looking to upgrade their Trex.

[chugga-bug]

Are you watching Align
This is how you do it!

The inner was pushed up the inside of the outer and retained with 3 machine screws and loctite.


[IMG]file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Ian/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.jpg[/IMG]

Looking great so far

When are they planning to bring out a 500?

[LaurenceGough]

The Dragonus 450 has been using that tail drive ever since the start.

That heli looks awesome though, CNC heaven! I love the main frame sections and bearing blocks!

[jiberjaber]

So tonight was the final parts of the mechanical build.

Starting from where I left it last night, the tail section was the first part tackled. Feeling cocky I just blatted on and assembled the tail case using green loctite for the static bearing and no loctite for the free bearing. I installed the tail output shaft with the belt in place and screwed the two machine screws which retain the free bearing. This resulted in the retaining screws facing away from the tail blades.



I then proceeded to build up the pitch leaver, this consists of two bearings with a brash washer as a spacer through which a part threaded screw is fitted.

This then screws in to an angle bracket which mounts to the tail case.... well it does if you get the tail case assembled correctly as per the manual!





A quick dis/re-assembly and the pitch arm would now fit on the case in the right location! LOL



Just going back to the following picture, you can see that there is a lip which arrests the angle bracket from rotating. One of the niggles with this heli has been where the screw has come out and allowed the pitch arm to wear away this lip/ledge. Plenty of loctite here should solve that.



Next it was time for the tail pitch slider. This came ready assembled and I didnt feel inclined to diss assemble, so I just pitted it. It is a pop fit into the pitch arm like a ball and socket.



The connecting links to the blade holders are fitted and have a brass bush arrangement within them to allow free movement.



I then proceeded to fit the tail blade hub assembly, again pre-assembled in the box. It is secured to the output shaft by one grub screw, which locates on a recessed section of the shaft. I made sure the hub was at the furthest point on the shaft to achieve maximum tail movement.



The blade links use a similar brass bush and screw solution to attach.

As you can see the tail blades carry the Beam branding.

The tail case uses the screw that holds the pitch arm to the case as an anti rotation device, there is however no such feature at the frame end.



Final thing to do was fit the vertical and horizontal fins and then secure the tail in the boom.

[jiberjaber]

The vertical fin supplied is very different from the normal triangular affair.



The horizontal fin boom clamp is made of plastic and uses self tapper screws to secure the horizontal fin and boom stays.

Boom stays were added which are made out of carbon rod. There is also a CNC boom support stiffener which needs to be installed before adding the rod ends.



I epoxyed the ends on rather than CA'd them and left them to cure in-situ screwed to the frame and boom clamp.

The tail push rod is the same rod length and material, with cnc end caps with threaded rod attached. No pics of these tonight I am afraid, some maybe tomorrow if I get chance to start the electronics.

I then installed the main gear and tensioned the belt up and secured the boom in place.

After this it was time to add the last few bits, so on went the flybad paddles with some CA, there were some skid rubbers not mentioned in the build, so since I hadn't CA'd the skids in to the legs, I was able to add the rubbers inside the legs so they dont come off and get lost!.

The battery foam was added and I also added the canopy gromits and canopy foam.


The canopy foam was odd as although it is shown in the manual, there is no direction as to where to put it. I have opted for just inside the canopy so it pushes against the lower frame shelf and provides some tension to secure the canopy from movement against the canopy standoffs.

Last but not least I added the motor and fitted a 13t Align pinion. We will see what that is like, I have a full range from 10t to 17t so loads of options.

On with the blades and out on to the grass for a few quick photos of this completed heli.