I’ve recently gotten my first build to the point where it was ready for water testing (will post full details in a “builds” topic post soon).
Lets just say the performance was underwhelming.
The core propulsion is this motor
- Voltage range: 8-12S (33.6-50.4V)
- Max power: 3000W; Continuous power: 1500W
- Peak current: 70A; Continuous current: 30A
- Motor KV: 160KV
With this ESC
- Amps: 50A continuous,instantaneous current 150A
Using the 3 blade aluminum prop that came with motor.
I’m using 2 4s batteries in series for an 8s 12aH pack (rated at 12C)
I charged the batteries up only part way, to 15.75V each (so 30V+ in series).
I’m using the VX3 remote set to 8s, which shows amps and watts.
VESC setup went pretty vanilla with detection wizard - don’t think I changed anything other than breaking current (set to 0) and inverted direction (can post screenshots, or share specific values)
On initial on-water test, I was only seeing a max of 14 amps. I initially thought maybe I had set cutoff voltage in VESC, but (finally getting to the puzzling part) when I tried in a bucket, I initially got similar amps, but as water got kicked out of the bucket, and water level went down exposing top of the prop, both RPM and amps went up to 30.
Is 160KV too high to get torque on that prop? Is 8s going to be too low a voltage to get decent performance from that motor?
I thought this combo would have more oomph.
-P