ECAD in Fusion 360 - Designing an Efoil ESC

EFOIL.builders Electronics (ESC, remote, batteries)
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Hi Everyone,

Storytime :blush:… I am sharing my journey of building an efoil ESC. And I want to do this completely inside Fusion 360. My primary goal here is to learn and understand the new Fusion 360 ECAD/MCAD workflows - and of course it would be amazing if I get this thing working.

The Eagle electronics design tech has been fully integrated into Fusion 360 in early 2020. Everything in a single product development platform. I am super excited about the possibilities.

I am really just getting started on this project, so much to learn. I documented my steps and hope it gives an overview and inspires others to check out the ECAD side of Fusion 360. I will continue to share my insights and look forward to your support and feedback.

All the best from LA,
Merten

19 Likes
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Wow, you truly are amazin !

Will follow this topic with great interest :smile:

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Wow, you really have some spare time.

Using the same box in my 3builds and have blown 3 75/300 over summer. Would definately want to try your board out once you get your design manufavtured.

Br,
Mattias

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Hi @pacificmeister, nice to see you back on track !

Mind adding following link to your initial post to allow anyone to find all the info on “Cheap Focer 2” ESC easier ?

However according to his creator, this ESC have only a 35A rating current with 70A peak and is safe to use at 12S :

What’s your thoughts about this ? Lots of people here could fly with 50A and less but we still need at least 100A for take off. Or do you have something else in mind ?
Have you built something already and/or tested ?

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Yeah I’m curious as well, maybe picked some better FETs and much better cooling with the casemount. I built up 5 of those VESCs and they work pretty good. Used in 2 diyonewheels (12s), and a couple other projects.

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Hi @Sliman_O and @brycej, it should be enough for many of us, I have successfully used smaller VESCs before limited to 60A peak and no problem, averaging 20A while foiling on bigger wings. Ok you might not be able to tow anyone with it and for 200pts+ weight riders this will be a challenge too. For me right now a cheap BOM was pretty important too while I learn and blow things up :slight_smile:

4 Likes
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Congrats for initiating such a nice project, if in addition the ESC is cost effective with “5 units for 120USD sticking to the BOM” :upside_down_face: … 24USD per unit :star_struck:
I hope this will open the way to a DiY remote project with ECAD in Fusion 360 :+1:

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Great video! Good to learn capabilities of electronics design within F360 as well, I wasn’t aware

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Do we lose ecad for personal use with the latest Fusion 360 license changes?

edit: here is what their site says:

Limited electronics and PCB design:

2 schematics
2 layers
80cm2 board area
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ECAD is sill part of the free version. But there are changes to the personal free version, details from Autodesk here and this TFI opinion is interesting to watch too. This ECAD project here should be doable with the free version, the PCB is just under 80cm2 and only uses top/bottom layer.

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You are truly amazing pacificmeister

I should start to learn to lay out too…

Thanks for the video…

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I’d love to help if you want to do a zoom sometime after work.

Edit and I would like to learn a little about the new ecad. I need to open my options in case of a mass bail from Altium.

1 Like
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Hey,
quick Question how can I decrease my amperage draw to use the cheap focer or other ESCs with such a low amp Limit?

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If it’s a VESC based design you can set battery and motor current limits with the VESC config tool. With many other cheap ESCs your can’t.

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Hi thank you for your reply,
but I wanted to ask on which points I can generally improve my setup to fly at 20a continuous.
For example a bigger Wing or something like that because most other Projects here need way more Current than 20a to foil.

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[Off-Topic]
The guys who fly below 20A aren’t looking for speed,

  • they fly without duct,
  • they use a large wing like the RL optimised front Wing or a Gong Rise XL (@jeffM) or Veloce (thinner so lower drag but a bit more difficult at the beginning). A high aspect windsurf wing would do the job too.
  • they use an optimized prop like the Flying Rodeo one or a customized 10usd cut down Yamaha clone (184mm to 130ish) like JeffM