Questions About 200A (or more) Brushless ESCs

Anyone have any experience with the Hobbyking Turnigy Monster?
https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-...___store=en_us

I'm looking into running some of the SkyRC Toro motors at 9 or 10S, and I need an ESC that will manage (the SkyRC Beasts won't cut it). The reason I ask is because the Hobbyking page says this:

WARNING
This is an R/C plane/heli only ESC. Do not attempt to use it to power car, buggy, skateboard, go-kart or similar machines. The programming logic is only designed for R/C Planes and Heli and will burn if applied to other devices.

This makes little logical sense to me. Is it that the ESC can't handle large current spikes or something, or are they just trying to cover their butts legally? If this isn't a good choice, does anyone know any other reasonably priced 9 or 10S 200A ESCs? Cheers.

That disclaimer is just so they don't get loads of people trying to return them after they blow them up trying to run electric bikes or skateboards. As long as you understand what you are doing its normally quite hard to break them.

The main thing is to not have your battery wires too long or the inductance of the wire causes a voltage spike which blows up the MOSFETs on the board. So long as you run them at least 2s below what they are rated for then you will *probably* be fine.

What are you using them to run? Weapon or drive? If you just mash the stick to full throttle instantly then it will pull a ridiculous amount of current which might cause it to explode too. So not good for a drive motor.

Weapon, hopefully a bar spinner. It'll be plenty geared down and have a timing belt for some slip since the motor itself runs at 780kv.

what you planning Rory...... at FW large bar spinner by chance ?

That's for me to know and for you to see explode. :)

solder some additional caps on the battery leads.

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Originally Posted by typhoon_driver

solder some additional caps on the battery leads.

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What size caps, and close to the ESC, or closer to the battery?

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Originally Posted by R9000

That's for me to know and for you to see explode. :)

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are you planning to make a featherweight Tombstone ?

As big as you can fit. Make sure the voltage is high enough on the caps for your battery otherwise they will go pop. Close to the speed end and I forget what the variable is called but you want them to react, charge and discharge, as quick as possible.

You want low ESR caps like these: https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/e...s=UPW1J681MHD6
I have a huge bag of them if you want me to send you some.

They need to be as close to the esc battery input as possible for them to have much effect.

That's it! ESR. Few manufacturers seemed to put it as a figure on their spec sheets if I remember right in which case, don't bother with those caps.

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Originally Posted by TechAUmNu

You want low ESR caps like these: https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/e...s=UPW1J681MHD6
I have a huge bag of them if you want me to send you some.

They need to be as close to the esc battery input as possible for them to have much effect.

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Cheers, might take you up on that if I do get the ESC.

Attachment 6784

Its not the best picture but here on the left you can see there are 4 wires connected to the VESC. The larger 2 go to the battery, the slightly smaller 2 go to a set of 3 1800uF 63V caps. These helped smooth out the power delivery to the VESC and reduce any spike loadings on the batteries; one of the reasons why CnS accelerate so quickly is because the VESC's get the power as soon as they want it.
This is probably as close as you can get them to the board besides them being physically wired to the board itself, so this is what you are aiming for. I would over spec on voltage just to be on the safe side; so if you are 24V, go 36, something like that, and you want as much capacity as you can get away with; within reason.

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Originally Posted by Eventorizon

Attachment 6784

Its not the best picture but here on the left you can see there are 4 wires connected to the VESC. The larger 2 go to the battery, the slightly smaller 2 go to a set of 3 1800uF 63V caps. These helped smooth out the power delivery to the VESC and reduce any spike loadings on the batteries; one of the reasons why CnS accelerate so quickly is because the VESC's get the power as soon as they want it.
This is probably as close as you can get them to the board besides them being physically wired to the board itself, so this is what you are aiming for. I would over spec on voltage just to be on the safe side; so if you are 24V, go 36, something like that, and you want as much capacity as you can get away with; within reason.

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Still managed to blow up two of them even with those caps...

Attachment 6785This is a bit overkill I think.

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Originally Posted by TechAUmNu

Still managed to blow up two of them even with those caps...

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These are the modified VESC's designed by Rory Mangles of Team Nuts; uprated FETs, Caps and a variety of other tweaks that I can't remember. We are also only driving around 60Kg max on hours which probably helps even if the motors a 3770W Continuous.

Yeah, experience tells me rotomaxes and VESCs don't mix too well in combat...

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Originally Posted by Eventorizon

These are the modified VESC's designed by Rory Mangles of Team Nuts; uprated FETs, Caps and a variety of other tweaks that I can't remember. We are also only driving around 60Kg max on hours which probably helps even if the motors a 3770W Continuous.

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Yeah that's the ones I blew the DRV chip on three of them. Managed to replace one but we switched to the VESC-X and haven't had a single problem with them. Even at 80A 8s with 80,000 erpm

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Originally Posted by TechAUmNu

Yeah that's the ones I blew the DRV chip on three of them. Managed to replace one but we switched to the VESC-X and haven't had a single problem with them. Even at 80A 8s with 80,000 erpm

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We were at 80A, 12S, 80'000 ERPM on the MVESC's. I think the weight makes a difference (60kg not 110 as mentioned before), and the quality of the Scorpions could play a factor too. I would be willing to bet there is some significant variation in the consistency of a Rotomax and other cheaper motors. They may pack a lot of power but i think that is partly their undoing when it comes to being drive motors. I have no evidence as such to back that up, purely anecdotal, but it was a dodgy Rotomax that kept killing Pulsars VESC's.

Actually not quite true. A motor seemed to consistently take out various SimonK-flashed ESCs in series 2. In series 1 (when I ran VESCs) it was the Mangled VESCs having the wrong (50v) ceramic caps and overrunning the eRPM limit pretty badly that made them die.

It's basically impossible to run 28p motors on current-gen VESCs reliably unless they're extremely low KV or you undervolt.

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Originally Posted by Ellis

It's basically impossible to run 28p motors on current-gen VESCs reliably unless they're extremely low KV or you undervolt.

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Good thing I am making some new ones then :D since VESC6 is way too expensive.

To add to Alex's previous posts, whilst I know people have had problems with even upgraded VESCs I feel it is worth pointing out that we haven't had a single Mangle VESC failure in almost a year running the scorpion HK 5020 450kv motors, of which we use 8 at a time. Their peak is 120 amps at 5320 watts, which we have made full use of. Yes Smash is only 60kg but we have driven with 2 HK 5020s moving well in excess of 110kg.

Eaun ; What sort of price are you trying to bring your brushless ESCs in at?

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Originally Posted by EventorizonIan

Euan; What sort of price are you trying to bring your brushless ESCs in at?

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I would also add that the three we broke, 1 we ran on a lab supply and regen broke it by overvoltage, 2 was from too high erpm 130000, and 3 was when mucking around with hall sensors. So none actually failed while in use, but the ability to damage them accidentally is really easy.

As for pricing on the 300A vesc, its likely to be £150 bom +£12 board cost. So probably selling for £300. That will probably change though. Once i finish the layout and get some made i will be sending some out for beta testing at parts cost.