OllinBoardCo's High Output VESC

You probably want to keep things where they are at. The defualt settings are pretty good for most people. If you start adjusting parameters too far from where they are at you could end up with drv8302 failure.

Do they have some sort of magnetic force that is supposed to be giving them extra gravity pull?

Yes 34 3/4" N42 cupped magnets

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=MMS-D-C

The white pucks are teflon, our frame was deforming without them

Hey @chaka, finally got to put the high output VESC through its paces today. I basically went as fast as I could on my way home today with lots of hard accelerations.

The same hill that apparently killed my dual enertion vescs was handled easily by your single vesc!

I am running it in a sealed container and the temp after riding was only 37C. Awesome!

1 Like

Awesome… Was the issue the heat?

Hard to tell. The details of the problem are here: http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/vesc-not-powering-motors-after-heavy-riding/703.

One was a DRV fault and the other was an over temp fet. I was also surprised Enertion would ship their VESCs with such poor wiring as well. I don’t like bad mouthing other companies but I was really left disappointed by my Enertion VESCs.

Since Enertion wouldn’t do anything to right the problem, I sent the broken VESCs to ollin board company for repair, proper high strand silicone wiring, and the high output treatment.

1 Like

what motor do you have connected to that vesc?

Right now I have a 170kv 6374 outrunner, 3kw.

Awesome! I love those beefy sk3 motors. They don’t get enough credit for their quality. Only motor I have seen eboarders use with a large support bearing for the inner can wall too.

I have repaired a number of those green VESC’s but I am starting to think there may be other problems since they continue to blow drv chips on the regular. I am hoping it is just user error.

In any case if the VESC’s I repair for you end up being lemons I will credit the repair cost towards a new set and switch over the good components to the high end pcb’s from OshPark. Waste not, want not!

2 Likes

What voltage do you have on it?

I am running 12S currently.

Cool, how does it handle hills?

Yeah, you are probably correct.

I have just built over 30 Dual Raptors with a full range of motor testing carried out over many days, that’s 60+ VESC’s, they all have the same PCB. - There were 360 units from that particular batch with that same PCB, all have been shipped out to customers.

… So far there have probably been around 8-10 known reports of failure on that PCB due to various reason. I acknowledge some had really bad wiring that got missed during the QC This may have been a contributing factor, Out of these reports some of the faults have turned out to be directly contributed to user error.

This equates to around 2-3% failure rate. So very unlikely there is something wrong with the PCB itself. Vedder himself openly admits to having DRV issues with units he has built himself. The DRV chip actually can fail for many reasons and at this stage of VESC development not all faults are well understood.

Also it’s worth considering the varied environments that these micro electronic devices are being used in. What precautions are being taken by the end user to prevent ESD which can damage many of the components on the VESC. Simply handling the VESC could be risking failure.

We made a listing for an add-on package for the VESC on our site. It should make ordering the heat sinked VESC a little easier: http://www.ollinboardcompany.com/product/vedder-s-speed-controller-heat-sink-package.

It is not the most ideal way of implementing heat sinks on a motor controller but it has been proven to extend the output range of the VESC considerably. It definitely provides better passive cooling and thermal mass so we are making it more widely available.

3 Likes

Do you have done a side by side comparison? I am very interested in also cooling my VESC FETS, but I don’t know how good it is to put a heatsink on top of the FET plastic housing. Would be great to see the temperatur of a VESC with against one without a heatsink in normal drive conditions.

I have done trials with it, yes. As you approach the thermal cutoff setting on the VESC it will start to loose power as the VESC employs the current back off strategy. Heatsinking the top and bottom fets has show significant benefits by staving off these temperature spikes during heavy acceleration or hill climbing.

Personal trials were done on the same board with the same VESC on the same hill. Prior to heatsinking the VESC would engage the thermal backoff strategy about halfway up, with heatsinks I had full power all the way up.

Have you done any experimentation with completely waterproofing one of these?

I can see an original VESC overheating if it was encapsulated in something (say silicone or PU) but for the high-output design would it be possible to encase everything except for the ports and heatsinks and still not overheat it?

I know it would be impossible to service if something went wrong but I imagine a relatively indestructible VESC at that point.

I would say fully encapsulating the VESC will have to wait for v5.0 with the direct fets but I could be wrong. We could probably get away with fully encapsulating 4.12 if we limited the load with a proper reduction otherwise I think heat would just build up and you would have to let it sit while it cooled.

Maybe a thermally conductive potting material? http://www.epoxies.com/products/thermally-conductive/

I would have to do some heat transfer calculations to see the effect it might have. I would be optimistic though since my high-output vescs are in sealed enclosures with minimal convection cooling and they run like champs.

2 Likes

Does anyone else have Ollinboard’s heat-sinked vesc running in a closed box ?

I do and I’m having problems with the vesc limiting power after roughly 10 minutes of riding. Stop, wait for 5 minutes and back to normal. Outside temp isn’t even that high, like 14 deg C or so.

It’s weird because I’ve done quite some heavy riding before and haven’t had the vesc drop the power. Only lately.

I upped the temp limits in the vesc to 120/140 to see what gives.