Don’t get the seaking… had it, sold it. Way under wire size fornsafe opperation, many have melted systems using it. Get something that has 8awg wire from esc… alien 350A sport competition grade with built in safety auto shuttoff and throttle features… $270 but you get what you pay for…
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Isn’t Pacificmeister still using the Seaking though? I’ve had experience with Alien from eskateboards and most of his stuff is highly overrated. Most of his ESC’s are just rebranded Chinese stuff (mostly Flier brand). That was a few years back, so maybe things have changed.
How much Current are all of you running on the Motor side?
I try to get better data on this using a modded Vesc 4.12. ( VESC – Open Source ESC | Benjamin's robotics )
Unfortunatly the weather here is way to cold for water tests right now.
The default cooling on this is bad, but the FETs should be good for 100A continuous with any decent cooling. Thats what I’m working on.
The bad thing is the required modification/assembly on your own form components.
Have you bought one yet… I’m looking to get it… 80A is fine I hope…
I have the Flier 22S-400A Boat version. Maybe it´s overkill if you look at the numbers but i think is better have more capacity on the ESC and it will probably not be as hot as smaller ones. And I will also use 15S as I´m using a TP5690 - 290KV motor.
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@Dirkdiggler @beonwater Bottom line, if you ESC had small wiring 12awg/10awg its not really heavy duty and will very hot and possible melt and catch fire and it happened with a couple guys on this forum already. Heat is an issue with high current so get something built for high current with 8awg, even if you buy something like a flier 200A it has 8awg wires and will run way cooler and safer.
yes 400A 22S is overkill, so is my 350A 16S, but for a few more bucks you have an ESC that will run well for long periods of time heat will not be an issue, vs the tiny seaking is all I’m saying.
Alien is repackaged Flier but you get great support with Bruno and support is imporant when learning and testing new things.
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I have 4 of them on my electric mountainboard.they Work really well but I bought a 22s 400a esc to use for my efoil
but VESC has current sensing/limit on motor and battery, sure you can get higher rated ESCs, but who protects your motor, ESC and battery then?
I guess you can burn your whole electronics just by drawing to many amps.
A fuse will stop that. With a correctly fused setup, wire size, correct c rating on your batterys and fail safe set on your receiver you will have no problems. Most escs now days have low voltage cutoff to protect the batterys from over discharge. If youre using a onboard bms such as supower or bestech it can charge and stop over current on individual cells otherwise a normal rc balance charger will work for external batterys. The down side to most vescs is that they have a erpm limit and its easy to blow the DRVs
yeah, but a mechanical fuse will burn after 0.5s or so (which could be way to late for your motor), the VESC cuts of in ms.
Do you have a BMS which allows ~150A burst discharge? All I found only have like 30 - 50A and then cut off.
Well, the 4.12 has a erpm limit of ~60kRPM for FOC, but BLDC works till 100kRPM.
and the 6.4 has a DRV protection and a erpm limit of 150kRPM for FOC and BLDC.
What prevents me from getting the 6.4 already is, that since the new firmware is out, the vesc should be modular, so you can have different voltage and amp ratings according to your needs. But the only thing I found so far was a mini version, not a high voltage one which I would prefer.
I guess up to 90V and 150A cont. would be perfect for all the SSS motors.
See link for bms 150A Bms The fuse will operate proportional to the fault current, generally it will be a hell of a lot quicker than 0.5 seconds lol. Motor should be fine with over voltage/Current for 5 - 10 seconds. However you are correct it will be slower blow times for over current protection rather then fault conditions. Most of the time the vescs dont run that high of a current mine normally sit at 40 - 45 amps max and dont often go above that on my mountain board see VESC LOG this is just logging a single vesc. Have a read through this page Eskate vesc 6 it has good info on the vesc 6 and pushing its current limits it could be a viable option for us
Hi VeFoil, I have done my first test today, and the ESC was running cold at all time (it’s been water cooled) and giving me plenty of power to fly on a Kitesurf wing. This is not very scientific has I have no way to mesure (Yet)
Ok, the 150A BMS looks nice and with a electronic fuse it should be quite as fast as the ESC.
I was thinking of a mechanical fuse, which you use at ebike batteries.
yeah, I read about a guy using the VESC for a rowing machine and drawing 150A while watercooled.
Since the FETs are able to do 240A with sufficient cooling and only the shunts limit the max amps to 165A it should work out if you have a good watercooling.
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UPDATE, second test and the ESC (Aquastar 240A) fried!!! So this ESC is not up to the requirements.
The water cooling was running and the ESC was not hot, but it looks like one capacitor gave up and luckily there was no fire.
Sorry to hear that Clarin. What pain in the butt and waste of money and I’m sure you were not using anything near 240A… Which ESC are you thinking about now?
@Giga I used a VESC orginally and it didnt like it… though it was not water cooled. But definately hard on the ESC.
what was the problem with the VESC?
Well you have to cool it to drive high amps, otherwise it is limited to like 20-30A.
But if you keep it below 60C you can draw up to 150A
thats not from the Fets the VESC uses, but it is a typical curve for fets.
And if you ever touched a heatsink of a running ESC you know that they get up to 100C quite fast.
It just over heated and would shut down, nothing wrong with it, its just not the right ESC for the job if not water cooled.
I ordered an Alienpower 400A 16s, hope this will be enough!
They are selling also a 300A power switch, which I will connect to my kill switch.
The vesc design is ‘suboptimal’ for cooling(4.12 hardware). All fets are mounted with their cooling pads facing each other. This prevents any good cooling. I had some success using copper cooling fins soldered to the remaining pads on the top. A real solution for waterccoling has to contact the cooling pads and isolate the fets electrically. I like the vesc for testing, but without proper cooling it did not work out for me.