Author Topic: Odd sensorless motor behaviour?  (Read 4916 times)

Offline Things

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Odd sensorless motor behaviour?
« on: December 18, 2012, 11:19:35 AM »
Hey all, I'm currently working on modding an electric scooter with brushless, and have chosen the BAC-283P.

The motor I am using is a hobby motor, a Turnigy SK3 sensorless brushless.

However, I'm having weird issues running this in sensorless mode on the goldenmotor controller. It seems to have very little torque, and I can even stop it by hand at slower speeds, which won't even move the scooter at all.

It also seems to be jittery, which makes it very noisy and unreliable at high speeds, which doesn't seem normal. All the hobby sensorless ESC's I have tried do not have this issue, so I'm thinking I've done something wrong here?

I have not yet programmed the controller, does anyone know what the stock programmed settings are? Maybe the 120 and 60 degree phase option is causing my problems, or does that only have an effect when hall sensors are in?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN9NQI96oDk

Regards,
Dan

Offline Bikemad

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Re: Odd sensorless motor behaviour?
« Reply #1 on: December 19, 2012, 10:33:02 PM »
Hi Dan andto the forum.

I think the jittering problem you have may be because the controller is not designed to run small diameter high speed motors, especially in sensorless mode.
Even Lyen's sensorless controllers are not compatible with higher speed geared motors, so a very high speed R/C motor is even more likely to suffer from synchronising/timing problems.

As the Turnigy motors have a much higher rpm/volt figure I suspect that the motor windings will probably have a much lower resistance than the typical hub motors that the controller is supposed to be used with, and if the resistance is too low it can cause problems with the controller.

It's also possible that the windings could be wired in a delta configuration instead of star ("Y") and it has been found that even delta configured Magic Pies can suffer from cutting out problems under load with the BAC controller.

Although the BAC-283P is a brushless controller, it does not necessarily follow that it will work correctly with all brushless motors. ;)

Alan
 
« Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 11:08:13 PM by Bikemad »

Offline Things

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Re: Odd sensorless motor behaviour?
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2012, 01:39:36 AM »
You raise a good point, although if that is the case, it'd probably be safer if goldenmotor stated on their site it was for use with hub motors only, not just "brushless motors", as that leaves a lot of room for people trying to use it with different motors and being disappointed. Although it does say it is designed for use with scooters too, many of which use a chain drive from a smaller diameter motor, so I don't know.

I'm going to try reprogramming it ASAP to try a few different settings, but if not, I think my next step would be to try fit some hall sensors.

The motor is rated at 245kv, so at 24V, we're only talking about 5000RPM max, and I won't even be pushing it that high due to instability on the scooter. The goldenmotor page kind of makes out that it can & will work with anything and everything, but they don't seem to provide any kind of specification sheet with even basic info like the throttle input voltage range.

Offline Bikemad

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Re: Odd sensorless motor behaviour?
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2012, 03:55:51 AM »
The motor is rated at 245kv, so at 24V, we're only talking about 5000RPM max

The Magic Pie has a maximum unloaded speed of ~180rpm @ 24V and has 56 magnets, so the controller will be switching at ~84Hz.
The Turnigy SK3 @ 245rpm/volt = 5880rpm @ 24V and has 12 magnets, so the controller would be switching at ~588Hz, which is seven times faster than it does with the Magic Pie at the same voltage.
To put it another way, the Turnigy SK3 would only achieve a maximum of 840rpm if the controller was switching phases at the same rate as it does with the Magic Pie @ 180rpm (~84Hz).

It's a bit like overclocking a PC's processor, if you try to speed the operating frequency up too much it will reach a point where it can no longer cope and will become so unstable that it is no longer able to accurately process the data, resulting in so many errors that the system will eventually crash.

If the speed controller's switching frequency is pushed beyond its acceptable working range it can result in poor timing and/or intermittent loss of phase synchronisation, which typically produces a much noisier and less powerful motor due to the high speed "misfiring".

I used my original Magic Pie in sensorless mode for several weeks when I blew my hall sensors and found it to be slightly noisier than when it was running in sensor controlled mode, but it ran smoothly all the way to maximum speed once it had started running.
You may well find that the Turnigy motor will run smoother and faster with sensors fitted, but I suspect it could still suffer from misfiring at much higher rpm.

Alan
 

Offline Things

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Re: Odd sensorless motor behaviour?
« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2012, 04:07:36 AM »
Again, this is where it wold be helpful if goldenmotor actually gave a spec sheet on the controller, so I wouldn't be taking a stab in the dark, so to speak.

Although I found the sync issues to happen at lower speeds also, I have a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN9NQI96oDk

And under a bit of load here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hns7N9EQdNU

Id would be nice if someone from goldenmotor could chime in here and actually give some specs on the controller. If it turns out to be unsuitable for my application, I may have to try resell this and resort back to a hobby ESC, which is unfortunate as I was hoping to get a solution with regen already. With a hobby ESC I'd have to implement regen myself, which isn't too difficult, but annoying as it increases the price of my BMS system I'm developing.

Thank you for being responsive though :)