Yes, in SLS PA12 at weerg or PCBWAY the controller box would come out at around 150€, I did not check the price if I do the controller and pod in one piece. In SLS I would be confident it holds without reinforcements.
I have a very rigid foil setup, but my use case is with big wings for wake thieving and pump assist ; any lack of rigidity can be felt in control and precision.
For exemple going from 5mm cheap EVA pad to bare deck and wax on my pump board really changed my efficiency and control to recover from bad starts or bad turns. I can also feel the difference between barefoot and with water shoes.
I did not have rigidity issues with the current setup, which is less wide than the mast base plate, I don’t know if @salomon noticed anything?
I have seen the video from the guy testing the seven larky FD copy, and he was saying his mast broke because the assist was less wide than the mast base. I am not sure it can be the case, but for some masts with open ended holes, maybe full with is better?
My GY carbon mast had open ended holes, probably same mast as the cloud X mast he shows in the video, but I did not have issues using it from sept to march with this setup.
That was from overtightening his base bolts. I have seen guys strip stainless threaded inserts doing this. Blows my mind that they thing they need it tighter than a car wheel
I also have no issues, and I have used the system with different foils. I also would have felt it if it was a problem when using it with my Sabfoil Leviathan 1550.
Started printing the new version, pod is printed and controller part is ongoing
Still unsure about the potting strategy for the RX.
Controller and cables zones should be pretty straightforward.
I removed the little RX tray as the controller now needs to be inserted from the top.
I removed all of the paste and replaced it with a thermal pad. On my unit the paste was also not evenly spread/missing in areas, so I would check for that.
And after it was easier and cleaner to just use a pad.
Tested the new version, it works.
I can feel that the prop is closer to the back of board, have to be extra carefull with the prop.
There is not more cavitation than before, but motoring is a little tricky as you have to keep the board flat and extra close to the water.
Pumping it is next level, very neutral and can hardly feel the motor toutching the water.
Cast in epoxy up to the top pcb of the vesc, then went with the magic gel again, I remember now why I did not like this product, it is sweeping all over the place.
Here is what it looks like on one battery, with pumping and motoring. The battery was still above 3.7v per cell after the ride, and I switched to the 1050cm2 foil mid session. 19 minutes, 5 km on foil and half the usable battery. Only works based on the amount of pumping I do on this setup^^
The start on the 1050 is definitely harder on battery and power, easy on flat water up to mid battery, but will be trickier in choppy waters and lower battery/temperatures.
Pure pump comparison between 1050 (barracuda L) and 1600 (barracuda XL)
With small 1.5kg board, dock start.
working on the CNC 12S1P 21700 version, goal is to make it 25mm thick, will need to use the flipsky 75100 pro V2 or similar for this one, has it has the horizontal capacitors, just the caps for the 84100 is higher than 25mm. When the internal layout will be decided, I will try to reduce the potting volume.
The current version is 41mm thick.
I made the spacing as wide as possible for the 21700 pack.
Ordered some copper-nickel sandwich for the 1P pack
I want to keep the same concept of integrated motor pod as my latest iteration, but add a sealed MR60 connector to ease swapping pods, goal would be to try smaller motors or some sort of jet drive pod.
The seal could be TPU or foam between the pod and the bottom surface of the controller box. the two screws holding the pod would also compress the seal.
There are a lot of vias under the FETs, which is the proper design not chinese crap where they put a heat sink on plastic cases. The cooling needs to be done from the pcb side, either passive or active. If you use an alu mast, passive is fine if you have an aluminium heat sink between the vesc and the mast plate.
I will try to formulate my requests more specifically. In this photo you can see that I can glue a massive radiator to the Fly Color controller MOSFETs, bring out its intended case, and the controller will be effectively cooled by the backwater. How can I do something similar for this controller, since the phase leads go right down the center?
Maybe I wasn’t clear, you don‘t put radiators on platstic cases of FETs! Heat dissipation through the bottom side which is soldered to the PCB is much better. Below the FET you put a lot of vias (small copper platet holes in the PCB). This way you transfer the heat from the FET to the bottom of the PCB. There you put a heat transfer pad and screw the PCB to a heat sink. No need to cool from the top. That’s why the terminals and caps sit on the top. Radiator goes where the hand is.
It is also mentioned ( in german) on the page.
My main issue is lack of built in bluetooth, I’m not sure you could have two UART ports, for both RX and BT module? I want to have different pods and motors to test, and being able to do settings in the field with wet fingers would be ideal
Making sure that I can swap out the pod from the bottom, even when the unit is mounted on the board. I will use the compression force of the screws to compress a foam seal, and fix/glue both MR60 in the pod and in the controller side, so that mounting the pod is just two accessible M5 screws.
similar strategy, with 1.5mm closed cell epdm foam compressed down to 0.5mm worked very nice in my latest unit, but the XT90 is basically impossible to machine in this way :
Yes, Already used vesc express and can forwarding, was not aware the makerbase unit were available and that cheap.
Ordered the vesc and vesc express, new RX. I feel like this project will be above my psychological cost threshold lol. But basically a middle class and universal flite lab
looking forward to test the latest and greatest 21700 tabless cells to the limit with this system.
Also interested to collaborate on this system as open source if other individuals would like to help design or build one. Will make a Season 3 thread about this.
Found a video of my first time on foil, 2 years ago august 2023
