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Re: Water Proofing Electronics It works like a charm. Here's a video of my rig going full submarine. Only the Holmes ESC is factory waterproof, the rest is protected as I described. edit: I did this three times that day and not a single glitch was had during or after. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UZkghH0Lkx8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics About 5 years ago i decided to water proof all my electrics on my SCX10 with Liquid electrical tape & dielectric grease. I never ran it in the water though and it sat unused all that time. I got it back out again recently and had found out all about Silicone Conformal coating but discovered i couldn't remove the liquid tape. I took it out for some water fun regardless and seems to have all held up fairly well, but changing to a 100% waterproof ESC (Mtroniks) and putting the receiver & light board into a balloon with silicone to be 100% submersible all day, every day. Light board Liquid tape & dielectric grease on the plugs - also going to add a balloon https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...c4&oe=59083030 Reciever board Liquid tape and case filled with dielectic grease - Also going to add a balloon https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...76&oe=5946738E https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...14&oe=5908E50B AE-2 ESC Liquid tape & top of case filled with dielectic grease (don't recommend the grease, as mud sticks to it) https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...3c&oe=591661FE https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...85&oe=59063D47 Turnigy 1501 Servo I opened this after a long water run and the area where the circuit board is, was still dry even though there was only 1 gasket at the wire. Water had ingressed into the gear area a little. I don't recommend as much grease as this, or perhaps any at all as it caused the servo to be really slow for a long time after building it up. http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i8...pszia1nwm7.jpg http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i8...pspwrplkng.jpg http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i8...psknen4ihl.jpg http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i8...psaiu9m6bc.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj3dRcADZTo http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i8...ps5auch6dh.jpg |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics After my post last night and cleaning my ESC, i noticed the liquid tape had came away from around the wires a little. I decided to use a scalpal and remove some of the liquid tape. I noticed as some have mentioned, it hadn't properly bonded to some items and to my horror there was moisture in places despite it seeming very well sealed from the outside. I've stripped all the liquid tape off the ESC, recevier (also had moisture under the coating) and cleaned them up with electrical cleaner and now applied silicone conformal coating instead. Getting the dielectic grease out of the casings wasn't too easy either. So no more liquid tape for me going forward. |
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Re: Water Proofing Electronics This is what you want to use GE Silicone II 10.1 oz. Clear Kitchen and Bath Caulk-HD5040 24C - The Home Depot It MUST be silicone 2. All others are acid cure and will damage circuits. You can get smaller tubes at walmart for $3-4. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics I've cleaned up all my boards with electrical spray and applied silicone conformal coating to try. The heatsink popped off of my AE-2 so waiting on some thermal adhesive before i pop it on and put the case back together. I've a Turnigy 5amp BEC i applied the conformal coating to, but going to put new shrink wrap over it and silicone sealant it at either side just to be sure. I noticed the servo i waterproofed above as well some water had got into the gear area but none at all had got into the area where the reciever and board were despite the casing not having a gasket on the bottom section (Turnigy 1501) My Axial light controler was the only thing that didn't have any moisture anywhere under the liquid tape coating but i done conformal coating to that as well, just to be sure. |
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You mind if I use this quote for educational purposes elsewhere? We are fighting against people using plastidip for this exact reason, and nobody believes the "hype" of real waterproofing products until it is too late! |
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It was the comments from other people that made me check mines and i was lucky enough to catch it before anything died |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics For people running the silicone conformal coating, will that be enough for long term exposure to the water if items end up submerged now and then? I've done all my parts with it now and they look well coated, thinking of putting some small electrical hobby boxes onto my rig so i can put the BEC, reciever and light board inside them and submerge it as often as i want without any issues. |
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Re: Water Proofing Electronics Good to know, thanks! It's wet about 80% of the year here in Scotland as well good to know it's as good as i hoped it would be. I don't regulary take it in the water, but it's nice to have the option to without worrying if you're going to ruin the rest of your day. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Hardcoretam, as you saw in my Youtube video. The conformal coating has and is working 100%. I live in Maine. We have lots of streams, snow, rain. I frequent the rocks near the ocean. No issues. I don't submerge my rigs all that often, but they certainly get wet enough. As a practice I hose my trucks off after a hard run. Its a nice and easy way to maintain a clean truck worry free. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics what did you use for this ? thanks Sent from my LGLS775 using Tapatalk |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics From my experience, liquid elec tape can work, but only as well as the user can prep for it. I will only consider it if it's a component w/o wires that need sealing, and only if I clean the entire surface with denatured alcohol. I have a few receivers that spent much of the last 2 summers getting dunked in fast elec boats prone to submarining. One I even stopped putting the hatch on. IMO it helps considerably if you cut it with some xylene to make it thinner (if xylene based). I recently had to pull the tape off 2 parts (the first I ever coated) but found no probs - they even had wires but were bundled and immobilized. Now I'm coating everything with MG Chem urethane conformal coat. I scrub the parts with a cheap toothbrush and denatured alcohol, let them dry a day, then brush on a urethane coat once a day. So far I've only done 2 coats w/o issues on items that got dunked. I go fairly thin on the first coat to avoid bubbles but coat everything. The 2nd is fairly thick and mostly on the parts like regulators and microchips. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Thanks for all the great information in this thread. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics On a waterproof RX, is there any reason you wouldn't trust a properly conformal coated rx outside a receiver box? Outside of dirt and other grit getting in there.... |
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I think it's actually better to have it out of the box then trapped inside a not quite waterproof box. Even a well coated Rx will fail if it's left submerged when the box fills up. Ask me how I know... |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Question for the Pros. So I've seen some awesome videos where guys go half submerged in water. How do they do that without destroying their lipos? |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Lipos are inherently water resistant by nature. The cells have to keep air out and keep volatile solvents in to be a stable battery, the pouches or cells are very well sealed in this regard. Unless the cells are put into an extremely high pressure or low pressure environment, you can consider them water proof. The plug (both power and balance) is the worst of your worries, it will corrode over time if not cared for occasionally with some cleaning and drying. If the battery uses a PCB to terminate the cells, corrosion can cause some self discharge or errors on the charge port. That's really the only worry. |
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Very interesting stuff, thanks for all the info! "thumbsup" |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Question. Ive read motor leads are not much to worry about with waterproofing. I’ve also read that battery plugs/terminals need extra attention for waterproofing. If this is the case, do I have to worry about the bare soldered battery terminals on my “waterproof” esc? |
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Exposed motor or battery terminals will work if wet, or even under fresh water, but I'd recommend you cover them with Plastidip, silicone sealant, dielectric grease etc. to reduce corrosion over time, especially if underwater: Have a look at 16:40 into this underwater test video I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilHMydlW7j0 . . . you can see bubbles coming off the exposed Deans plug! Beware salt water. Well, just don't go near salt water with your RC as it'll corrode it to death. To be honest putting your RC into any sort of water will cause corrosion metal parts and no matter how much marine grease you pack bearings and axles with the water will get in eventually, so submerge at your own risk! ;-) |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Wow, pretty cool video. Thanks for the info. I’ve been using a liquid electrical tape. I just filled the bec shrink wrap with it and filled the sensor port on my motor for now. (Until someday I get a sensored esc) I’ll use it on the battery terminals on the esc. But in the plugs I’ll use dielectric grease. |
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When you go sensored, make sure you waterproof the hall-effect sensors in the motor 8): https://youtu.be/wS_WyUEdO50?t=897 (due to the harsh environment and temperature changes I recommend epoxy for this, not liquid electricl tape, Plastidip or conformal coating). |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics I wrote this for our servos, because despite them having 13 o-rings, the words waterproof never cross my lips. I believe you may find something useful regarding making your servo more water resistant if you read it. https://www.promodeler.com/askJohn/W...ater-resistant My 2¢ |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Just a quick tip I found to work for my electronics. You can cover stuff in rubber cement to waterproof it. I have used it on receivers and mini ESC's Just make sure you don't miss a spot or two, It's really hard to see where it is and isn't when you apply it. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Good writeup John. We have found that moisture will readily travel down the wire jackets as well. Putting some grease at the PCB where the wire jackets stop will put a halt to it for a while, but moisture just hides and waits between the wires and insulation. Multistrand wire is particularly good at being a conduit of water. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics So, back on page 12 I saw a question about using a small pelican case as an electronics box (a cheaper, easier to repair option over all these dips and epoxies. I do not have any pictures of what I did (which is a good thing because it wasn't pretty). I used a dremel to cut a slot long enough to lay all 4 channels and the battery leads side by side. After feeding them all through, I sealed the slot with sealing caulk, then very carefully sliced off an eighth inch of sheathing from every wire and poured white glue in until the unscripted wire was submerged. Keeping the wires taut while it dries kept them apart, and then a final coating of caulk to keep the wires in place if the glue did get wet. It worked very well for an actual ROV submersible for 6 months. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Any tips to waterproofing our transmitters during rainy weather crawls? I'm getting pretty tired of walking around with a clear grocery bag around my hand [emoji23][emoji23] |
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Re: Water Proofing Electronics Currently i am using RTV clear silicone, it works very well. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics Sorry for dragging up an old thread. In the past I've used balloons and sillicone with great succes! Usually fitted the esc into the balloon, clear sillicone in the end and working it in around wires with your finger outside the balloon. The a zip tie, and about 1/2" outside that another zip tie. I used the smallest zip ties. Mine never failed, the second zip tie is there if the first one fails. My vehicles of that time spent most of the time in the wet, and a lots of times under the water or wading. Only issue 10 years down the line was the balloons have turned to gel some places and was pretty stuck to the esc. But esc worked flawlessly (Tamiya TEU101BK). Used the same method for receiver. Hitec 645MG was as waterproof as you could get, and never failed a beat. I opned it several times after having the vehicle under water, and usually the was only one or two drops of water inside. Savöx was crap, it freaked when driving over a puddle, and it was noicy and thirsty in consumption. I will never own a Savöx again, there so many great brands out there now. Wanted to try something new (for me) a week ago. On my bench I have 30min Zap Z-Poxy which does not shrink, which is a must I have read. First I made a mouldbox in .020 styrene to hold my cheap Yeah Racing Winch Controller. https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...080&fit=bounds The winch controller lived in a case that was far too big, and it had a bulky white 4 pin connector at the end and undersized wires. I removed all of them and soldered new JST plugs and wires to it. Also soldered a wire where it stood antenna on the board which was missing, but have not a clue if it has helped any.. https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...080&fit=bounds After coating the box with carwax which I don't know is necessary, I lad a thin bed of epoxy before I dipped the controller in the mouldbox. After that I covered it with more epoxy. https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...080&fit=bounds After one hour I pulled the box apart and this is the result. Was a bit gummy, but hardened fine later that evening. And still works at it should "thumbsup" Also the whole block now glows from the led when in use :mrgreen: https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...080&fit=bounds I still have my esc and other stuff to do. This will work very fine for me. Coating will fail after a while, epoxy will not if correct type is used. My receiver is coated with clear nail polish, and that works brilliant too after several years of use :flipoff: Sorry if pics is too big, Photobucket has just renewed their site so the size may be changed from last time I used it. |
Re: Water Proofing Electronics For the receiver I just used conformal coating. You do have to take the receiver apart and make sure not to cover the bins button and the plug posts. I was told 3 coats was a good amount by someone wiser than me. |
Re: Poor man's electrical box Nice, Great idea |
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