Third enertion vesc failure

I am going to start of this post by addressing those who are contemplating on getting Enertion’s VESCs… DO NOT BUY THEM.

Let me explain:

I ordered two enertion vesc back in December and got them in February. Plugged one of them to my laptop and did a motor detection, got it running and ready to plug it to my board. Finally the next day I got my board ready and connected all the components. Got the board running for about 45 min. I was riding at a relatively low speed (around 15km/h) considering it was my first time on a Esk8. All of a sudden my bord stops aggressively and i go flying. Came back home with some bruises but nothing too serious. Messaged Onloop and posted on this forum about what happened. I got told to check for possible errors on the bldc tool and i did so. I then discovered i had a Drv chip failure. Asked onloop if i can get a refund but unfortunately he said no as it wasnt covered under their guarantee and claimed that it could of been the users fault and not theirs. As a newbie I thought he might be right and i might of accidentally did something wrong. I naively did nothing afterwards.

Now onto the second Vesc from December. Did the same procedure (pluged it to Bldc and did motor detection) with extra care. Plugged it to my board and lasted me for about a week. Keep in mind that that VESC well protected with no possibility of shorts happening. And again the same god damn drv failure.

NOW… what brings me to write this post. Even with these two vesc failure i decided to buy another two vesc from enertion as i wasnt entirely sure if these failures were caused by the manufacturer or the user. So went ahead and order two vesc in May and guess what… got them 4 months later in August. Thats fine, i dont mind waiting but every single time enertion kept pushing the shipping date… WTF. Anyway got them finally. Plugged one vesc to the bldc tool and couldnt get the motor to spin right. I later realized (with peoples help on this forum) that i had the wrong bldc version. So i then downgraded the bldc tool and got my vesc to work fine. Plugged it to my board and everything was fine. I decided to put some heatsinks on three of the mosfets just for precaution. Rode the board for exactly 8 days with medium use. Everything was fine until tonight when i decided to go for a night ride. Pluged everything, went outside and rode the board for a minute until i started to notice that the board was jerking. At first i thought it was my transmitter that was causing that due to signal interruption but a few seconds later the board wouldnt move even with the transmitter and receiver signal very strong. Got home, inspected everything only to see three red blinking light. At that point i knew for sure it was an drv failure.

Now before anyone asks me about my set up for all of the VESCs, i was using 10 cells 5000mah batteries (2 turnigy nanothech), a 6374 sk3 149kv motor and a hobbyking gt2b transmitter.

Now i am not in anyway trying to bash or insult onloop as i am fully aware of his contribution in this community. His ESK8 Hardware seem to be of good quality even though i have never bought a motor mount or a pulley but see good reviews on them. HOWEVER i am going to say that enertions customer service is the absolute worst customer service i have ever come across and their vescs are extremely bad quality. I had to wait 4 months and pay over 450$ that i will never get back on a product that fails every single time. And i dont mind if he is in his garage trying to get his company to grow but do not tell your customers that you will ship their product on date x but end up shipping it 4 months later. Now i get it that you might run into some complication along the way but you are fully aware of those complications and instead of giving a shipping date, at least give your customers a heads up by saying that they might not get the product by x date.

And people…Keep in mind that I have never given a bad review on anything i ever bought. Its fair to say that i have been patient with enertion by not blaming them about the first two vesc failures but instead made sure that i wasnt the cause of the problem first before writing anything negative about their product.

I am sure some people who bought enertion vescs can agree with my statements. I am trying to save people’s time and money here. And i am speaking from experience.

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This does sound extremely frustrating. I feel like you should get a refund at the very least.

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Show us your settings and setup, so you don’t go through your 4th one

I can understand your frustration, went through 3 vesc in one night once… I was pissed, then i found the bad setting i had, no problems since

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I was really frustrated with VESCs myself and I think you have a motor short somewhere. My first VESC did the same exact thing. Replaced the DRV and got riding again but I felt sudden brakes. Read through some threads here and fiddled around with the motor phase wires and all that junk. It does not seem to do it anymore but I’ve since been running a new SK3 6364 190kv which is flawless. Please change out your motor for another one (still cheaper than buying any new ESCs) and repair the VESC. I’m sure you will be not have any further damaged VESCs and hopefully no more injuries. Take care.

I will do that first thing in the morning. Its 1h17 am here and gotta wake up early tomorrow. But expect those pictures tomorrow.

Trust me i did everything. I bought 2 motors from hobby king thinking i would do a dual setup but ended up using the first motor for the frst two vescs. As soon as i got the other two vescs the first thing i did was change the motor to a brand new one. I would not have written this post if i wasnt sure it was the manufacturers fault. Thank you for the suggestion.

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ollinboard vesc or bust. I’ve had 0 issues with mine, the one user error I had was fixed the day it arrived at their P.O. box and I had a tracking number that night.

edit: I should mention I run 12s 149kv single chaka vesc, though I HIGHLY recommend you get cell checkers for each of your batteries, despite whatever low-voltage monitoring the vesc claims to have. I have 3x 4s (vesc isn’t specifically designed for this), one of the batteries was draining unevenly and took a cell all the way to 0, and another one down below 2 volts.

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Man if i was you i would buy a vesc from @chaka and maybe send those 3 broken vesc for a proper repair, just type ollin vesc and you will see how many happy customers there is, and on top of top notch quality, fast shipping like 2 weeks instead of 4 months and by far one of the best customer service, imo ollin and diy are the 2 best esk8 suppliers, i dealt with enertion once and thats it no mo for me

Guys I burned a couple of vesc myself but is it really a supplier issue? chaka vs onloop? vedder himself had many failures and fried drvs , so this is an open hw/sw project and it’s highly possible that you would burn chaka’s vesc as well

and then you will realize how difficult it is creatr such a controller

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I think this is more a consumer issue. ‘A product should be fit for purpose and last a reasonable amount of time’ If something purchased fails for whatever reason when used within scope of purpose sold then consumers expect a level of service from seller such as replacement or repair. In my opinion VESC went to market too early in development - It should still be sold in BETA test phase for those willing to accept risk of failure - not as an off the shelf product. What will happen if (God forbid) a serious accident occurs when brakes fail due to overcharge or whatever - it’s reasonable to believe an electronic speed controller should not fail under braking but many have - original poster crashed when VESC shut off/failed. It does not matter how difficult something is to design or build, if sold to Joe public it should work without issue - regardless of price or profit

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I can understand your frustration, we have all blown up vescs before. But this forum is not designed for you to complain & blame so keep it off the forum.

Just remember enertion vesc are all tested before shipping. Each one is powered up, firmware loaded & motor is spun up. So your vesc definitely was working before you got it.

We also offer 12 months instant replacement warranty on the vesc. No other vender offers that. Did you buy vesc that has the warranty? If not you can buy it now and get an instant replacement sent.

If there is a manufacturing fault. Or user error fault you are covered with our warranty. No questions asked.

We build 20 - 30 raptors each month with the same vesc and they are all working great. Rarley will there be any faulty units and if it does happen is normally our fault. We also test ride the raptors before shipping. Pure manufacturing Problems are very rare.

We also ship about 300 vesc each month at the moment. If there was some quality issue where are the other 300 complaining customers?

Is there a chance you could have done something wrong?

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Is the vesc inherently prone to failure though? Who’s lasted the longest? i think it could be because of the extreme conditions of a skateboard. If it’s made robustly its solid state electronics and should last and last right? Once I had one on FOC I was hooked so all I can do is hope for the best and so far I’ve been pleased. I do still have good potting resin and think potting it is likely much safer concidering the vibrations and stuff

I’ll admit. It took us a long time & lots of trial an error to get an optimised drive train. We also sent motors to the vesc designer for testing and feedback. We tried many settings to get a well tuned system… we sell motors and vesc & batteries… they are all designed to work together reliably… if people buy other stuff they need to expect some failures…

VESC work very reliably when used correctly… people who connect random motors and batteries and have unknown and untested configurations with little preavious knowledge of vesc and how to configure it tend to have the most problems… this is why we offer the best warranty in the market. Instant replacement for any faulty vesc…

People should consider buying the vesc with the best warranty if they are experimenting with untested motor and battery configurations.

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That sounds a lot like the multiplication bug I found. Make sure to only use firmware that is form the source directly as well as only the BLDC tool from the source.

Exactly - when sold as part of a package designed, tested, optimised and set up to work it will perform - You have done the ground work and are confident to supply.

Average Joe consumer has not gone through the trial and error process for their set up and can’t become a VESC expert overnight - they’ve purchased an Electronic Speed Controller and will expect it to work. In time it is likely that the VESC will become a simple plug and play electronic item but it’s not at that stage yet and users need be made aware of risk at time of purchase.

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If people don’t read about it and buy it anyway it’s not in our controll… we have tried hard to educate but it’s ultimately the buyer decision.

We also pre install settings for our motors to make it easy…

I have personally written nearly every vesc article on this forum. I also encourage my customers to write about there problems openly on the forums as I know it helps others diagnose issues…

So Why no other VESC vendors writing help articles? Why doesn’t chacka contribute his immense vesc knowledge to write articles to help others? He has openly said he only helps his customers in private? Seems a bit unfair… I have openly shared all my vesc knowledge (vesc faq) and made available to all users…

When drivers crash their cars do they blame the manufacturer?

I agree with you - it is the buyers decision - if you underline this at time of purchasing a $99 VESC in BIG HIGHLIGHTED WORDS that buyer accepts risk of possible failures when used with other set ups or changes to firmware/settings (not hidden in terms and conditions of sale blerb) then you can simply quote this when problems arise and start the help/solution conversation without a buyers expectation of immediate satisfaction and a free VESC,

The fact that there is plenty of information available on a forum does not mean that people will read/understand it.

Many 1st posts are people venting frustration following a problem that has not been resolved the way they wish - that’s human nature. A standard reply to these would then be possible “purchaser accepted the risk and we are trying to help”

If they can yes

This article I wrote talks about how to change the motor current…

I am not sure Measuring with a watt meter helps. I suggest trial an error approach… slowly change the setting until they feel best. Normally default settings are 95% good. it’s just the remaining 5% that can perfect your ride.