dji fpv - spare parts

[thetechnobear]

I stumbled on this :

DJI FPV SERIES PARTS

Cloud City Drones, Rhode Island's first and only Pro Drone Store specializing in UAS for Public Safety, GIS, Inspection, Photography, and much more! We assist from the consulting phase to the planning, purchasing, and instruction. Free shipping on orders over $350 - Contact us at 401-681-4112

cloudcitydrones.com

everything is marked as special order and no idea of 'wait time', and not much use to me as they are in the US
... but perhaps indicative of prices we might expect to pay for spares.

its be really nice to see spares start showing up on these online shops and/or 3rd party drone repairs.
(I saw a couple of UK companies saying they will repair dji fpv)


I did ask DJI support for a rough estimate for a repair on one arm - which they basically refused to give me...
the official line is, buy care refresh, otherwise - we will give you an estimate when you send in your broken drone on a case by case basis.

 

[droneguy]

Looks like this site basically took apart a DJI FPV drone to sell for parts. They don't appear to be an official DJI repair center. Interesting idea though. Wondering if the sum of the parts on the service market is worth more than the price of the drone as many of the parts will rarely ever need to be replaced in a crash.

 

[thetechnobear]

nah, I dont think so... they have loads of parts for (all) other DJI drones... and when you select a part it says they are DJI authorised.

of course, we dont know... my suspicion is perhaps repair centres have been given some kind of parts list, but I suspect they are not actually available yet.
we will only find out in due course

I also do think there might be a market for spare parts from crashed fpv...
I think you would easily sell an arm + motor for $50 or more

( I guess the 'issue' with this is.. IF spares become available - then less crashed drones will be sold, since they can be repaired)

 

[droneguy]

I'll reach out to my contacts at DJI to find out.

 

[droneguy]

I've had mine apart already and all I can say is that the central frame assembly is going to get broken often and that's a complete gut job to repair since everythig attaches to it.

 

[thetechnobear]

I've had mine apart already and all I can say is that the central frame assembly is going to get broken often and that's a complete gut job to repair since everythig attaches to it.

see my other post, but it appears a one arm replacement by DJI is around $100 (!!)
that video shows, parts are indeed as cheap as shown, above... (perhap more so when dji direct)

of course, how much damage you'll do is complete variable - you could smash it into tiny pieces.
but most videos Ive seen so far....
one arm is very common (it takes the main impact)
second arm if they are unlucky.
some have the gimbal break. (not usually the camera which is lucky as thats expensive)

if the parts are cheap (which they appear to be) , then labour is the main element...but the thing about labour is there is always a minimum fee - so id not be surprised to see a simlar labour charge on one arm, or two arm + gimble.


anyway, we will see....
perhaps one 'advantage' of so many early crashes is we are going to quite soon, get alot more reports of user experiences when drones are sent in for DJI repair.


btw: sure a complete stripping down of the drone is time consuming if you do it once, and are not sure what you are doing - but DJI techs will have plenty of practice at this, and will get pretty quick

 

[droneguy]

That's encouraging! Still crazy expensive compared to FPV racing drones, but heading in the right direction.

 

[thetechnobear]

That's encouraging! Still crazy expensive compared to FPV racing drones, but heading in the right direction.

DJI is never going to be as cheap as diy - that's just an unrealistic expectation by some.
I'd also say, here in Europe, if you sent something like this off for repair to anyone $100 (incl shipping) would be considered very reasonable for pretty anything
(I guess if a local repair shop doing it, then it could perhaps be cheaper ... but thats not viable where I live, it would have to be posted somewhere)

the only cheaper solution I can see is if we can get spare parts and have then do diy repairs.
but again, thats not really an expected DJI route ... but I do hope some how this might happen.

 

[droneguy]

I don't think anyone expects or believes DJI parts will ever reach the same lower price of hobby grade parts, but it's a good sign that parts will be available to repair centers. I repair drones and the parts market for popular DJI drones is full of options many of which are 3rd part equivalent parts that are less expensive and sometimes a better price point when repairing older drones for instance where people don't want to spend DJI prices.