Gimble problems?

[JMC3]

It’s my first drone. The pro 2. Ok I have been reading in several posts on different forums about folks having issues with gimbles. I can see from my own drone it is a delicate piece of hardware. So I’m wondering about the cause of the gimble faults. Is it human error or built in failures? Is there something I should be aware of?

 

[dirkclod]

I’ve had mine since it was put on sale . Have crashed it...not bad..
had it dunked in a pond for a few minutes..got me a ruined battery
on that) and my gimbal is fine.
Now most of what I have seen they get messed up in crashes.
Be it UE or a firmware issue causing the crash.

 

[Fizzbang]

Yes crashing does it no good. Also dust and/or sand.

I have taken the gimbal apart a couple of times. Tricky to do. Too many tiny pieces.
I have seen posts describing the camera as settling low or lop sided.
My conclusion is that the twisted cable loom(since it passes through the centre of all of the motors except the pitch motor) may offer a slight resistance that causes the changed alignment. There is nothing else except dust or dirt in the motors to cause a misalignment. (I have had mis-alignments and not found any obvious dirt or dust in the motors)

There is a stop centre back of the support for the yaw arm which sits in a cutout around the yaw motor. The yaw arm should rotate freely from stop left to stop right. The roll arm motor seems to have an internal stop which limits the roll arm motion. The camera pitch is limited by a collet which extents into curved slots in the camera frame thus limiting the pitch rotation. The twisted loom does not pass through the centre of the pitch motor but it does pass through the centre of the spacer on the other side.

 

[JMC3]

Ok if the user is careful then maybe dirt is the cause. Would it be prudent to use canned air to clean out the dirt on occasion or would that force the dirt into crevices?

 

[Fizzbang]

Ok if the user is careful then maybe dirt is the cause. Would it be prudent to use canned air to clean out the dirt on occasion or would that force the dirt into crevices?

I thought that I had been careful but still had problems. My current issue was caused by tinder dry grass next to the landing pad. The blades caught the grass and a cloud of dust was created. The gimbal would then not set straight.
Things then got gradually worse and worse. I have since rebuilt the gimbal but as yet no success with firmware updates.
Work in progress. It now seems there is an issue with an SD card.

I suggest air blowing if, and only if, there is any roughness in rotation. All motors should be free and smooth from stop to stop. (Except for stepper motor Resistance)