I'm extremely surprised to hear that soldering the XT90s was hard. Even a $20 Pinecil (well, maybe I shouldn't say "even", it's a fantastic iron) can handle those no problem.
Also, what cost 1200 EUR? That motor costs 30 EUR, an ESC another 40, and the batteries maybe 80 EUR for Li-Ions (less weight). Were the CNCed plates that expensive?
EDIT: Added the praise I meant but realized I forgot to actually write.
But if you take that perfectly good soldering iron and apply it to AWG 10 wire, you're going to have a bad time - because the wire will conduct heat away almost as fast as you can apply it.
Personally own the TS100 and absolutely adore it for mostly building keyboards.
Yes you are absolutely spoiled by both of these. Before them were super terrible irons or the expensive brick sized ones with minimal optionality. Having come from the 'dark ages' it's night and day.
The debug board, which I don’t have is a great example of using usbc for development and debug (as opposed to test contacts inside the device).
It does need a version 2 though as the tip holders are not great.
ps. thanks for the tinning walkthru below
It's great to see good builds like this - I keep saying "one of these days". In my neck of the woods we have a pretty resource in the form of GRIN[0]. I believe Justin is a longtime participant on endless-sphere.
My latest build (on a Walmart special) was a BBS02 that probably rings in around the same cost but without the openness of this build.
Once the wire goes in, you remove the iron, hold the wire there for a second or two until the solder solidifies, and you're done. I used 12 AWG but it should be pretty close.
EDIT: I just did it again, make sure you hold both the wire and the XT90 firmly with helping hands or something similar.
You can hack it by just turning the temperature way up, but there are a number of drawbacks to doing so. It's better to use the right tip.
> Being on a tight budget, I was able to procure/purchase all parts month by month and finish the build within a year. This includes all parts for the kit, as well as building the bike itself, which I did not have prior to starting the project. You can see the final build below.