## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide


# Vulcan Raven **Heavy Lift MultiCopter** Frame Assembly Guide V1.01

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide 

## Thank you for purchasing the Vulcan Raven. The Raven is a very tough, heavy lifty folding airframe in the X8 con figuration. Please follow these build instructions carefully, and we wish you many hours of safe and enjoyable flying! Note on parts - Part designs are always changing and being improved. Do not worry if the parts you have or hole patterns do not exactly match those shown in this manual, details contained here will still apply.



## SAFETY NOTICE Multicopters can be dangerous and pose a significant risk of injury and damage to property. Always take all necessary safety precautions to avoid damage or injury to yourself and those around you! Never fly near or over buildings, roads or people. Always ensure you have plenty of space to fly with an uninterrupted view of your machine at all times. Always stay well clear of moving propellers. Before flying..... Ensure all nuts, bolts and linkages are tight and cannot come undone. Check your propellers are securely tightened, have no chips, cracks or dents and if they do, replace them as necessary. Propellers should be attached with nylock nuts or double nuts, never relyon a single standard nut to attach your propellers. Ensure all electrical connections are secure with good contacts, well insulated and cannot come apart. Make sure all onboard equipment such as batteries, cameras or any other payload is properly and securely attached and cannot come loose, shake, vibrate or move around during flight. Always make sure all batteries are fully charged and range check your radio.

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide 

## The Power Disribution Board (PDB) The first thing to do in your build is prepare the power distribution board. This is a critical part of your multi rotor as it ensures reliable and consistent power supply to all the onboard sys tems that need power from the main battery packs, including ESCs and your flight controller. Many will have their own ideas about the best way to distribute power on their machine, and whilst this manual is not really aimed at power distribution, we have included some general good practice tips: Always protect your internal wiring. Any movement of internal wiring can lead to wear of the insulation and eventually a failure, so we would recommend protecting all power wires with heatshrink or similar - any suitable tough covering that is resistant to wear and heat. ESC control wires are thin and quite vulnerable, and are best protected with something other than heatshrink as the heat from the shrinking process may damage them. Nylon braiding is a good alternative, and although it is less resistant to heat than heat shrink, it is easier to fit over pre fitted plugs, and better looking, so a good choice for any wires that will be visible. If your PDB is of the correct specification and correctly assembled, there should not be excessive heat present. Good solder joints are critical, and enough heat must be present to fully melt the solder and allow a good bond between the PDB and wires. If you are using our Vulcan Power high current PDBs, the thick copper in them will suck the heat from your soldering iron very quickly. So use a powerful iron with a large head that can retain it’s heat. A Weller 80W iron with 10mm head is as good choice. It is a good idea to run dual independent battery connections for redundancy, rather than use battery splitters when using multiple LiPo batteries. It is wise to run several auxilliary power feeds from the board to supply power to anything you may need now or in future.This will save you having to open the frame and solder in more feeds in future should you find you need them. Use thread lock on PDB mountings to ensure there is no way the PDB can come free over time, or a short will occur. Carbon fibre is highly conductive.

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide



## Motor Mounts & Arms First, it is good practice to protect your motor wires from abrasion, especially where they enter and leave the arm, pass by the bolts, or if they need to go around any sharp edges such as the motor mount. Heat shrink is a good choice for this. See FIG 1 below . Also check the edges of the metal arms where wires enter and leave and make sure there are no sharp edges.If they feel sharp, gentle use of a small file will smooth them. 

## Parts Included It should be noted that parts and kit contents may change slightly over time.

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide

We strongly recommend when heat shrinking your wires you do so with the wires flat in a line of three, and not as a bunch. This will make inserting bolts through the arms passed the wires much easier. See FIG 1 above. Once you have protected your wires, fit two motors to two motor mounts. Ensure you get the angle of each motor such that the wires run easily around the sides of the motor mounts. Do this before fitting the mount to the arm as it is easier to thread the motor wires before mounting bolts are in place. Use washers and thread lock on the motor bolts, but be careful not to get any thread lock in the motor. 4 x 30mm pillars with M3 8mm bolts are used to join the motor mounts, and this is the point to also fit the LEDs. Always use thread lock on the pillar bolts. The LEDs are fitted between the motor mounts with two pillars running down through the LED housing. We recommend that the wires from the LEDs run from the top of the LED under the top motor mount and down the arm. Always protect the LED wire from damage. You may find using braiding easier than heat shrink for this, but the choice is yours. You will find it esaier to insert all three sets of wires down the arm together rather than trying to insert the LED wires after the motor wires. It is also a good idea to mark which set of motor wires come from the top and bottom motor at this point in order to identify them later. Repeat for all four pairs of motor mounts. Now fit the assembled pairs of motors and mounts to the arm. Take care when inserting the bolts through the arms not to damage the wires. Fit the mounts to the arms using 3 x M3 45mm bolts with washers and Nylock nuts. DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN THE NUTS! If you do you can crush the arm! The nylock nuts will ensure they do not come loose, although you should always check nuts regularly for tightness. See FIG 2 below. Note: One arm in this image does not have LEDs fitted to show how the pillars are in stalled. 

## FIG 1

FIG 2

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide



## www.VulcanUAV.com . Frame Centre Plates

FIG 3 Start by fitting two large grommets and attaching 30mm aluminium standoff pillars using 10mm M3 bolts to the lower frame plate (see FIG 3 below). Note the 4 marked pillars are fitted with an M3 16mm threaded studs that will go up through the top frame plate. Use thread lock on the bolts holding the pillars. Also note the 4 outside pillars marked in FIG 4, they are attached with M3 16mm bolts through two small carbon parts on each side as shown. These are only required if you are using retractable landing gear. If you are using the retracts, now is also a good time to loosely fit the four 12mm clamps that hold the landing gear (see FIG 4 below).



## FIG 4

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide Next fit your power distribution board, ESCs and other internal electronics to the frame plate. As people use different internal electronics and components, this manual does not cover this part of the installation, however FIG 5 shows a typical installation as a guide. Note the positioning of the ESCs. As a general guide it is good practice to protect all internal wiring against wear or dam age. There are different ways of doing this, heat shrink and / or braiding are both good options. It is very important that when you assemble your frame no wires are trapped, and that all wires are properly secured and cannot move. As this is a folding frame, it is also very important to check how the wires are affected by movement of the arm, and to ensure that no wires are rubbed, pulled or trapped during the folding process. A bit of careful thought and forward planning about where to run wires, how to keep them in place during use, and where to run them up onto the top plate, (or out the un derneath) to best fit the installation of other components, can save a lot of time later.


## FIG 5

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide 

## Assembling & Fitting the Anti Vibration Plate Before closing the frame centre plates, you should fit the anti vibration plate, as it will be very difficult to access the nuts once the frame is closed. The plate uses 12 silicone gel bushes and is rated to around 8 Kg max load. See FIG 6a to 6d below. The gels split in two with the fat half in the underside of the plate.It is then snadwiched between 2 x 18mm washers with a 25mm bolt up though the centre. Screw the nylon spacer down all thew way compressing the gel. Hand tight is tight enough 

## FIG 6a

FIG 6b

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide 

## FIG 6c

FIG 6d

Once the gels are fitted, attach the L shaped ali brackets for the rails according to FIG 6d above using M3 10mm bolts, nylock nuts and washers. Then fit tothe underside of the lower frame plate. See FIG 7 below.

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide



## FIG 7 Main Assembly Once the anti vibration plate is fitted, you are ready to close the main frame and fit the arms. Fit the top plate to the pillars using M3 8mm bolts and thread lock, making sure you have fed any wires through the necessary holes in the top and bottom plate before closing. Large holes for wires should be fitted with the large 25mm grommets provided to protect the wires. Once the frame plates are closed you can fit the arms. Arms should be slid into the frame making sure the motors wires run in the correct loca tions for the relevant ESCs. Align the inner most hole in the arm with the correct hole in the frame plates. Take one M3 45mm bolt, fit a washer and then the carbon load spreader plate, and insert doiwn through the arm. This can be tight, and the bolt must be carefully placed down the side of the wires, and out of the lower hole. Then fit a second carbon load spreader plate, washer and nut on the other end of the bolt (see FIG 8 and 9 below). Once this is done, insert the two quick lock cam levers with large 18mm aluminium washers and M3 nylock nuts on the bottom threaded end. The inner bolt should be loose enough to al low the arms to move, but tight enough to provide some resistance to movement. Close the cam levers and adjust the nylock nuts to get the correct pressure on the arm. The nuts should be tightened such that the cam levers can be opened by hand but are tight and diffcult to open and close. If they are too loose the arms will not be properly supported. Always ensure the cam lever is sitting correctly in it’s saddle before closing. Once arms are fitted, fit the safety latches. These are simply M3 8mm bolts that fit the carbon slices in the lower frame plate. See FIG 9 below. To open and close the arm when these are fitted, bend the frame section with the bolt downwards and rotate the arm over the bolt head.

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide


## FIG 8

FIG 9

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide 

## Standoff Plate To fit the top standoff plate, first attach pillars to the studs coming up through the frame from the four pillars fitted with them. Two extra pillars also need to be added to support the top plate, see FIG 10 below. You can use 30mm or 60mm pillars to support the top plate depending on the size and shape of flight electronics to be fitted under it.



## FIG 10

The GPS puck sits on the high oval plate that attaches to the centre of the standoff plate, held on by 2 x 60mm pillars joined with studs, making a height of 120mm from the top plate. These pillars can be extended as necessary with further studs and pillars. See FIG 11 below.

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide



## FIG 11

The 12mm rails are fitted through the two B shaped carbon plates provided. First fit the 4 grommets into the B plates and then insert the rails. The fitting is tight! It is recom mended to use lubrication such as WD40 to aid in sliding the rails in. Once the B plates are lined upon the rails, attach them to the aluminium L shaped brackets on the AV plate using M3 10mm bolts, washers and nylock nuts. See FIG 7 above. The B plates fit on the inside of the aluminium L brackets. 

## Fitting Retracts The retracts fit using the short 12mm carbon mounting rails in the retract mechanism. These go through the clamps fitted to the underside of the lower frame plate. See FIG 7 above. Once fitted, and before tighterning the 12mm clamps, you need to attach the rubber buffers for the retracts. These are stick on rubber feet that sit between the re tracts unit and the carbon cross spacers above it. These provide some impact absorbi on for the retracts, but also help to move the angle of the retract legs nearer to vertical, which reduces the spreading load on the legs during landing. See FIG 12 below .

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide 

## FIG 12

Final Points Multirotor aircraft can be extremely dangerous, so it is important that safety is para mount when building your machine. Do not rush the build, ensure all wires are prop erly protected, and whenever fitting a part ensure that no wire is trapped, crushed or likely to be pulled during use, especially during folding. Always ensure all wires, and other components are properly secured and cannot come loose or move around during flight. Before first flight, re check all bolts for tightness, ensure the arm locking mechanisms are all in place and are adjusted and working correctly, and ensure the arm mounting bolts and cam levers are properly adjusted. Cam levers should be able to be opened by hand, but should be tight and fairly difficult to open and close. If you have any questions or are unsure of any aspects of this assembly, please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help! info@vulcanuav.com

## www.VulcanUAV.com . Vulcan Raven Assembly Guide

Disclaimer: As the assembly, care and circumstances of use of our products are completely beyond our control, VulcanUAV and it’s associates, partners, officers, employees and assignees, remain completely harmless and free of liability or responsibility for any damage, harm, or claim arising from the purchase, assembly, use or misuse of any product(s) purchased from, or supplied by us. VulcanUAV makes no claim of guarantee, warranty or any other claim, expressed or implied, that any item supplied is suitable for any purpose, including the intended purpose. Furthermore, nothing said, written or implied by any person connected with VulcanUAV shall invalidate any of the preceding disclaimer. The user assumes all liability for all potential damages or claims that might arise from the use, purchase or handling of any items supplied by or purchased from VulcanUAV.