From Enertion, Jason has kindly offered his support. Regarding quality, yes you are right… however I understand it’s still early stages for the VESC’s (these are 4.7). Provided the support is there I am still a happy customer 
Actually these things cost more than $100…
The problem is that VESC can fail for many reasons, especially in its raw form without no case!, one of the reasons they can fail is shorting them out accidentally - I did this to two VESC 
- it’s simply bad luck! and not covered under warranty.
The warranty I offer is only good if the fault is proven to be a manufacturing fault.
From the 250 units sold by me so far, since the BETA program started, it actually seems the failure rate is fairly low! I am not sure what an acceptable failure rate is with electronics but so far it seems ok.
Originally I had people return the first batch because of the wrong capacitors being used during assembly, not necessarily because of faults - those vesc actually did worked well with the wrong caps… Those people got their money back The 2nd batch - all made to spec - maybe just 2 or 3 out of 100 (which is what batch @moja has @cmatson) - these guys will get a repair or replacement. whatever is cheapest/quickest This last batch it’s too early to know if there is problems. hopefully none!
Most people’s VESC problems can be solved/repaired by replacing a few parts that often cost much less than $5 - the difficult part is the soldering job and man hours, so REPAIR is what i offer first…depending how/who carries out the repair i might offer store credit or cash refund etc to cover cost of repair…
Like I said these things are super expensive and I make next to no margin out of selling them, so of course I am reluctant to straight swap these for people - especially when I have not stock of them to swap with… So in the long run if failure rates get too high I will simply stop having them made as it won’t be viable.
However, so far i think it’s been fairly acceptable in terms of reliability & failure rates & most people are being reasonable when it comes to solving problems. ALSO I am not a PCB technician OR Software engineer so don’t get shocked when i say i can’t fix it! I can’t because i don’t know how! I also can’t fix the dead ones in a box on my bench so I’m out of pocket on those ones too.
At the end of the day, If we all work together we can find viable solutions… Hopefully this melbourne business can repair the moja VESC, if they can at a reasonable price i will contact them and try to negotiate a repair contract so that i can offer better warranty & service to everyone through the form of repair. Maybe eventually I could even start offering extended warranties OR replacement warranties!
For folks in the us with VESC i know that @chaka has done some repair work. Contact him to get a quote & ill pay the repair cost. if he is obliging. My general concept is to ensure no one is out of pocket if their vesc fails due to manufacturing faults.
Eventually VESC won’t be considered a BETA and then everyone can expect much better warranty & service but in return likely pay a small premium more per unit for that.
I hope this make things clear to anyone wondering about buying a vesc!
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@onloop Your pragmatic and service-oriented attitude is commendable. Could you shed some light on the kind of testing that is done on the VESC before they are issued to customers ?
I’m new to the scene but so far I’ve seen only VESC’s coming from either Australia or the US, I’d love to see them become available from a European source as well and I might even try to source them from a local supplier myself. Any tips/recommendations ?
FYI, I offer a “bare bones” VESC for $100 with free US shipping so they are available at that price.
I also manufacture them “in house” so repairs are a snap.
“BareBones”
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I know that its been stated that the gate driver pins 50-56 are supposed to be shorted, but the picture of @chaka 's VESC doesn’t appear to be, and is a lot neater.
If you take a look at the gerber files using KICad those pins are joined under the solder mask. It looks like a little clean up on the micro processor and a fresh tantalum capacitor might fix this unit. It is hard to say what cooked that cap, I see it was covered with a bit of foam. Could it have overheated?
I suppose I could but it will have to wait till things settle a little bit, I have to take care of my customers first.
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Lead time is still 2 weeks ?
i am assuming lead time is from time of order till shipping? or receiving?
Yes, it is still 2 weeks. That time is based on ordering PCB’s from Hackvana. I am going to order a few hundred for the next batch but that will probably go just as quick.
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@chaka and @jacobbloy: I’m assembling a VESC but cannot find R15 in V4.10 anymore compared to V4.7. Its a resistor 330kOhm at R15. Was it just omitted and Benjamin forgot to remove it from BOM V4.10?
Yes, it was removed.
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Thanks Chaka, that’s good to know.
They get powered on. They get firmware loaded. They generally work or they don’t.
I’m happy to do more testing though. I can do motors spin testing. What else do you want done? You probably looking at about some additional surcharge though.
I recieved my 4.10 VESC from enertion the other day. I havent had time to test it yet but on appearance it looks a lot neater than the OP’s
however as mentioned in another post the black lead from PCB to Cap board is about 4 or 5 mm too short which brings the live rails alarmingly close to the servo pins. i’l be re doing that one before I do any testing.
oh… for what its worth I understand the need/want to get the power rails as close to the FETS without having to potentialy make the board larger with fat tracks. but leads connecting to the middle of a board is poor design in my books. (not pictured) on the otherside of the board the +ve lead runs right over the 5v pin on the CANBUS connector. its not shorting yet, but I bet a couple hundred ks on a skateboard will be different.
keeping in mind that this is essentially a BETA product, and its still in the teething stages. I wouldn’t expect any warranty to be offered and all work should be performed by a qualified technician.
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Personally I wouldn’t mind paying extra for the knowledge that the VESC’s I’m receiving have actually run motor current. I’ve PM’d you.
Testing is fine but just plugging in every vesc and loading firmware and bootloader takes time, Iv written a script to cut the process in half but just plugging it in and pressing enter and parameters for ppm and enertion motors are preset. To do 120 vesc you can imagine can take a few hours, then to plug in a motor and pin test we are taking about longer because the time loading isn’t programming its plugging in and unplugging and plugging the next in.
Hi all! I also received the VESC 4.10 from Enertion. The overall quality looks good, but as @lowGuido I am a bit worried about the red and black leads at the center of the PCB. One of the component has already cut through the insulation of the black wire and the copper is visible. As for the red wire it is indeed very close to the 5v pin. For now I won’t plug the VESC as it is. I don’t like it, but I think I will try to re-solder these wires perpendiculary to the PCB. Also I will try to make a small PVC enclosure. Apparently a lot of VESC failures are due to shorts so I don’t want to take a lot of risks.