ESC efficiency & heating on less than full throtle?

Well, generally I would go higher voltage, less current.
ESC gets more efficient with less current. And overall strain on components is less by less current (since isolation is for ~200V anyway, there is not really a advantage in design for lets say 30V vs 50V).
But I just had a closer look at the specs: it is not just delta /star, also torque is different and they have same current and voltage rating. So for the sake of higher efficiency at bigger slower prop I would choos the 100KV one since it has more torque.

In general, if you are limited at voltage (like: I dont want to go above 50V in water, or above 15S ESCs get damn expensive), choose the highest voltage you can do and then choose based on RPM…unless you like to use some kind of reduction/gear.
Current then settles with power demand. E.g. if you need 3kW to get out of the water, your battery is 50V, your motor should do at least 60A.
But also keep in mind who “made (up)” the specs you use for decision…

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I’m going jet drive, with impellers, which typically operate at far higher RPM than props. So they’re happy at 10-20k RPM. The smaller the impeller, the higher the optimal RPM. So the 4:1 gearing is perfect for my needs.

Of course leverage has losses. The transmission on a car usually suffers 10-20% loss of power between engine and the wheels. Yet its worth having it because direct drive would result in worse efficiency. Even Tesla cars have a single 10:1 gear reduction. And Tesla designs and has their motors built to exactly their needs. And yet they still have a single stage gear in there.

You have me here. No I haven’t run a chain drive at 50k. Maybe inside the board some of the noise will be muffled. But I haven’t built my chain drive to experiment, so maybe this all goes to shit.

That’s the thing, I’m not building an e-foil. I’m building an e-surf and I want it to be able to hit 35+ mph. The plan is twin 64mm jet drives driven by 4:1 geared 1000kv 56104 using the full 50k rpm to hit target 12k rpm of the 64mm drives.

Do you get the 64 mhz jet unit ? If so do the know the pitch of there 64mm impeller ( 12krpm enough for top speed ?)

If you haven’t bought the jets yet, I would go for a pair of jets from youngsters jets (YouTube). He has designed a 53mm impeller and it works really well. He can even run the jets off 6S batteries. Smaller jets allow you to use cheaper components all round.

I’ve seen youngsters 53mm(?) jets, but its really unclear what his status is. No website and so no clear way to order them. Plus, I get the feeling they might be expensive.

He’s also running smaller motors and direct drive on his 53mm jets, so I get the feeling my larger geared motors might be overpowered for the 53mm jets. So I’ll go 64 and then adjust the pitch as needed.

I’m not going to get the Mhz drives. Too expensive. There are some free designs out there that I want to try.

I understand the foilers want to keep the engine diameter small, but for a jetdrive surfer engine will be inside the hull(usually). Is there benefits of running only 56 diamaters, torque would be probably the double on a 100 mm + engine? Do You know how much Torgue the engine need to produce for running 64mm impeller at 12000 rpm at 35 knots?

There is no specific benefit. The only reason I’m running 56104 is that they’re cheap and even with 2x they’re cheaper than a single larger diameter motor of equivalent power. The 2 1000kv 56104 14kw peak motors I bought totaled under $300 USD. Whereas a 24kw peak motor is anywhere between $600-$1k USD.

But…a commercial jet drive, like MHz is $600+ per drive, in which case it would have been cheaper to go single drive, larger motor. But because I found some free designs, the jet drives were almost free, thus making the 2 smaller drive/motor approach more economical.

For a jetdrive you normally run a 80mm outrunner as you get more torque.

He is shipping now. You need to email him directly.
I have 2 onean 64mm impellers that I am going to use for something. Not quite sure what yet though. Probably design a unit that can be used in both a surf and foil.

I wrote this short summary last July;

As Jezza says, Mark solution is twice the fun for half the price.
Other source: Graupner
Graupner Jet Propulsion Unit 5 (2347) at 165USD/EUR is temporarily unavailable
It seems to be replaced by the CEM Jet Propulsion Unit 78 same price
Both use the 10USD/EUR 49mm impeller

230 GBP is pretty expensive. Almost as much as the MHz drives?

The jet 2 from MHZ is £100 more so £200 more for the 2 units needed.
I think 230 per drive for Marks is a pretty good price for what you get!

Do not trust these specs, there are numerous faults in them.
Trust the physical explanations.
Also i would like to precise this:

Kv (like i write it to express K(onstant) suffix V(oltage)) has to be given in SI Units rad/s/V to get the reciprocal Km in Nm/A. Of course, losses and load conditions are not taken into account.

What makes a well-designed engine can be very different, depending on its intended use.
Sometimes the weight per torque plays a very decisive role, this would result in very short outer rotors with a very large diameter, largely hollow inside.
But we can’t afford that under water.
However, the formula T ~ D * D * L allows us to compare compact inner and outer rotors. It has nothing to do with the winding itself, but with the ability to conduct the magnetic field over a certain area. This area is multiplied by the lever arm. This gives the relationship T proportional to D * D * L. The ability to conduct the magnetic field through the air gap is limited by the magnetic field strength inside the corresponding iron parts of the rotor and stator and is a physical limitation of the iron, the saturation. If it gets too strong (1 Tesla could be seen as a limit), the field will stray (or short cut) too much due to saturation and the efficiency will go down dramatical.
All these and many more effects have to be considered to build or choose the most compact and powerful motor for our/your special needs.

If you want to use an inrunner with gear, always have a look at the corresponding ungeared outrunner solution to make a comparison for cost, efficiency and weight. I get 3.2kW out of a simple APS 6384 PG 100Kv with 1kg weight, being very well cooled, so i can run it at minimum 80A motor current (RMS) continuously. It is performing far away from its structural ability because of rather low RPM, but for the torque and current it is always at the limit.

This leads us back to the original title of this thread i do not want to miss:
If you try to dimension everything to run at a dutycycle of 100%, you will loose a lot of efficiency on the prop side. You need a very small propeller to get rid of the need to limit the current, so if the prop would be overloaded by low vessel speed, it just keeps spinning with very high RPM at full throttle, cavitating or at least thrusting with low efficiency.

So lets make a conclusion: You have a typical machine, and if somewhere a part is too weak you either can overdimension it or you protect it. Protection by sensing and control is successful design. Electrical Fuse instead of mechanical overload clutch. Current limitation instead of fuse. Current limitation instead of clutch. Current limitation instead of small propellers. Current Limitation instead of low pitch propellers.

All this current limitation implies that the switching losses can be accepted from different viewpoints like maximum power, efficiency, cooling, etc.

The switching losses are proportional to U * I * f. In an ideal world, f would drop down to the motors frequency much lower than usual pwm frequencies from 5-40kHz to realize sensorless control by phase current sensing shunts added to voltage measurement. So these losses would go partly away. Unfortunately we would need sensors to get away from the need to pwm.

So last conclusion: The question is qualified, the answer is complex. A lot of clever people will work on the optimization of physical and electrical systems in the future. Lets give them some hints. Add some links please. You put me on this lane together.

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hey guys , great thread here , and thanks to @aethyr for his explanation about the need to take the full advantage of the motor by using gear boxes. this is true as the need for rpm is less than the motor max high speed point. most motors are “high speed” instead of “high torque” or more designed in that way

I have then an idea to remove the gear box and hear me out :slight_smile:
Taking the sss 360kv or 500kv and using the max voltage we will get the max speed of 45000rpm , then we can design a propeller to suit this speed which will be smaller than propeller using a lower rpm value. here I am then transferring power via voltage and speed at the max point. the motor will draw no more than is max current , here 90-100A.
it is also advantageous as no need to parallel batteries ans can use 12c 10000mah ones. but more series has to be used in series to reach 24-36S

what do you guys think ?

There will be cavitation above a certain speed of the prop, that’s why people use propellers between 120 and 150mm diameter @ around 3000 to 5000 rpm.

The propeller pitch is a form of gearing. A higher pitch results in lower RPM, but higher current/thrust per revolution. A lower pitch results in higher RPM but less current/thrust per revolution. However, as @sat_be said, there’s a limit to max RPM because of cavitation.

Now a jet drive can tolerate higher RPM on its impellers, but roughly 20% less efficient than a propeller. However since our gearing options for efoils are limited, we don’t use the full power of the motor in a prop drive, often missing out on 50% or more of available power. So if going jet drive allows for full utilization of the motor, despite its 20% drawback, it’s net more efficient.

I think people are trusting the specifications on these motors way too much.

There is no way a SSS 360KV motor will live a very long life at 45k RPM.

The nsk 6900 bearings they use are only rated for 32k RPM.

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thanks guys, I understand we need to limit the rpm, and to really get rid of the gearbox we would need motor with a low kv like 50-100kv or motors with a very high current ratings.

so I am thinking to have the rpm around 6000 - 12000rpm , broad range for now ,
I am running the equation of power and thrust and prop disc area to calculate what my system would be like
there is even a calculator on www.vicprop.com

what is the power I should target to ride comfortably at 25km/h?

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Thanks to everyone contributing, nice when people spends efforts and time to teach us that don’t have the knowledge!

Still a few things puzzles me:

  • Electric motors are said to have superior torque, still in this application we struggles to get same performance that of same kw combustion engines(outboards) of both 2 and 4 stroke, and it seams that the torque is mainly the issue?
  • some here says we need gearing. There is a propulsion system called Azipod, used even on icebrakers. That is direct drive… and super high torque application. Off course totally different type of vehicle, but still no gear, no one there saying they are loosing maximal capacity of engine with direct drive?

Just wondering, can it be so that as most of the motors we uses are originally developed for RC purposes, and because of that they are not that great for our purposes?

Combustion engine outboards use gears :slight_smile: As I said, if you have a 12kw motor that revs high in RPM, then by not using those RPMs, you’re missing full power. A formula 1 engine generates 800hp but is tiny, around 1.6L. It generates those 800hp using its 20k RPM. Meaning it has low torque at the engine shaft, but because it revs so high, the car uses gears to convert that low torque to high torque. But if you DON’T use gearing to take advantage of all those RPM, then yeah, the raw torque at the shaft is low, because its a 1.6L engine. Each rotation of that tiny engine generates a small amount of torque.

The hobby BLDC motors we use are designed for small r/c airplanes, boats, helis, all which need super high rpm. But our real world e-vehicles don’t. So we’re basically using high reving formula 1 engines, but not using full RPM and thus hurting our potential torque output.

Regarding azipod:
You don’t necessarily need gearing if you use the full RPM and current and voltage capabilities of the motor and don’t need extra speed beyond the max RPM of that motor. And remember, the propeller pitch is gearing too, there is, in essence, a single gear on the azipod, just not in the traditional sense.

Unlike us, they can design/build their motors exactly to the specifications they need. I guarantee you if their motor is a 1000V motor that can handle 2k amps, they’re using nearly every single volt and amp of the motor, along with the optimal propeller pitch to achieve max efficiency.