As the title says, I’ve burned through multiple vescs so far; two from my own personal stupidity of accidentally causing a reverse polarity, and a third and most recent one for reasons currently unknown.
I’ve gotten a total of about 10 mins of use out of my first build before the board shut itself off and came to a stop. when I took it home and undid the enclosure, the master vesc was unresponsive, while the slave vesc was fine. When plugged in, the master vesc has no lights that come on, no audible whine from failing parts, and it is not recognized by the bldc-tool. There is some heat being generated from what feels like either the large 220 uH inductor, or the DRV chip next to it. It feels like the inductor is hotter, but I know more people have issues with the DRV chip than anything so I don’t want to rule that out Not able to load faults, the vesc is completely unresponsive.
Here is a compiled screenshot of my motor settings:
Does anything stand out as a red flag? I’ve destroyed ~$300 bucks worth of these and I really don’t want to do this again.
They are Maytech vescs bought from them on Aliexpress. The battery is a 12s4p battery I made with Samsung 30Qs, and the motors are dual Turnigy SK3 6374s.
I can’t find anything that talks about the difference between BR ERPM and just ERPM. I have my ERPM set to 60k, and the BR ERPM set to 80k (default value).
I would start with 30A as bat max.
I never had one of this hw4.12 VESCs, but I read that the max is about 35A if not in an extra heat sink case installed.
EDIT: There is nothing wrong with your settings; the motor controller you received is a lemon. The big electrolytic caps in the plastic shroud are not even connected to the PCB. You should ask for your money back on all three controllers.
Reliable alternatives, the $99 FOCBOX is the best option, Flipsky also offers decent ESCs, but you’ll have to pay for shipping. I can’t recommend TB ESCs because I literally watched my friend’s TB ESC die at 12S on FOC; it needed a DRV8302 replacement.
Also, if you get the FSESC 4.20, be warned that it will throw DRV faults if you try to put too much current through it (above 50A) or try to change the current too quickly, such as by quickly reversing the throttle.
In order to repair the motor controller, two things need to be replaced, the DRV8302 and the 5V TVS diode. A soldering iron and a heat gun can accomplish this. Additionally, the plastic shroud needs to be opened up and the board of electrolytic caps needs to be soldered (with wires) to the power rails of the motor controller; make sure they have the correct polarity.
Arrow.com offers free overnight shipping and they have DRV8302s in stock. Any 5V TVS diode will work.
I think the problem is the vesc in general. The main issue with these particular vescs is the fry the drv easy. Hence the name “drv cookers” if possible I would get some more reliable vescs especially with 12s.
Personally I have run Tb 4.12 vescs at 12s just fine although I also added extra capacitors to be safer from voltage spikes.
Focboxs are a great option atm as they are $99 or turnigy vescs from Hobbyking are too as they come with a 12month warranty. Flipsky are another good alternative just stay away from the 4.20 version
Yes, but they aren’t electrically connected, the electrolytic capacitors are basically floating in the plastic. The metal leads of the capacitors are soldered to a small board, but that board is not connected to anything else. Those capacitors may as well not exist for all the motor controller cares, which is very bad for the motor controller.
The titel should be changed to: Fried multiple VESC clones.
All those ESC are not VESCs! VESC refers to the original, solid hardware.
Failing, non genuine hardware, branded VESC, has a negative impact on the projects reputation.
The hardware you show is obviously non genuine, 3rd party Hardware.
If you open a thread called “failing VESC”, uninformed users get the impression that VESCs fail easily. It’s the VESC clones that fail, not VESCs. VESC is a registered Trademark!
Please change the titel to assure that people know exactly which Hardware failed. If it was a M-tech ESC, call it by its name. Always try to be as precise as possible.
The caps are connected to the leads. Have you disassembled a vesc before? The caps are soldered to the pcb board which is then connected to the power wires. The pcb has some prongs that protrude a little wider with solder pads to attach to the wires.
@trampa WTF! How can something open source be original. Does that mean that every single vesc 4.12 is not genuine? Because it’s not made by Ben himself? In that case your own vesc 6 is also a “clone”. This is just dumb, if the files were not released for others to use then they would be clones (ie. the focbox, those files aren’t released as far as I know) however the 4.12 and 6 file have been released so I would not call it copying.
In a properly assembled VESC, yes this is the case.
However, in the ESC that the OP has, this is NOT the case; he does NOT have a properly assembled VESC, and that is why all three of them failed quickly. They are lemon controllers, he did not receive a correctly assembled product and should demand a full refund from the seller of the ESCs he purchased.
How can you tell just from those pics? You can’t even see the connection point from these pictures. You would need to remove the heatshrink and angle the vesc differently to have a chance of seeing the connection point
Well, since the capacitor board and main PCB are not physically connected, as can be seen in the pictures, in order for the two to be electrically connected, there must be a pair of wires running between the two.
In the picture. There are two sets of wires, a pair of black and red wires that are power positive and power negative, and a set of three wires that I can safely assume to be for the receiver.
The black and red power wires run along the length of the capacitors, and across the capacitor board. The two wires appear to be completely insulated along their entire length in the picture, aside from the solder joints on the main PCB. Thus I can safely assume those wires are not electrically connected to the capacitors or capacitor board.
Since there are no more wires present in both pictures, I can assume that the capacitor board and main PCB are not electrically connected.
The wire insulation is only partially removed, it is removed from one side of the wire but not the other. Just think about it why put caps there and not solder them to the wire, like what’s the point
Ask Maytech, they clearly do not know what they are doing.
I saw some reviews on Banggood explaining the same situation where the capacitors were not electrically connected.
Basically, the makers of whatever ESC the OP purchased blindly copied the design files of the VESC 4.12. The additional connection between the capacitors and main PCB are not present in the PCB design files.
Not able to load faults, the vesc is completely unresponsive.
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