VESC from Enertion: DRV8302 spectacularly blown, what went wrong?

It looks like the DRV8302 of my VESC has suffered a massive failure. It was purchased from Enertion earlier this year and wasn’t ridden particularly hard. I started braking, the board came to a halt and never restarted. My friend told me that some smoke had come out and here’s what I found:

I saw a few comments about bad capacitors triggering that issue. My questions are:

  • Is there a most likely cause to this issue?
  • How can I ensure it doesn’t happen again with a new VESC?

HW config details:

Motor: 3.2kW 63mm motor:

KV: 170 MAX POWER: 3200W WIRE WINDS: 10 MAX AMP: 80A MAX VOLT: 10S RESISTANCE: .56 NO LOAD CURRENT: 1,4

Battery pack:

2x 5s in series 8000 mAh 30C discharge 5C max charge rate

Wooow, that’s one for on the wall ! Also curious on how to extra-protect the DRV chip since I also blewn one already (BLDC)

What is your enclosure made of? Because carbon enclosure can shred, leaving bit of highly conductive carbon shorting the board.

EDIT: also you need to give your drv some love… or it can cry tear of fire… :slight_smile:

My guess is a small metal debris getting between the pads of the controller chip.

That almost looks like a massive overvoltage failure, does your soft switch allow to regen the battery?

Hey @JohnnyMeduse, the enclosure is made of ABS.

@Blasto, yes the soft switch does allow to regen the battery, it’s been working fine that way for the last few months.

I just looked at the high rez, man that is some massive roastage, not sure the pcb is salvageable. C39 just blew up, no where to be found.

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WOW. That’s pretty epic. Sucks, but impressive failure. This obviously isn’t the usual DRV failure, so i’m not sure anyone here can tell you how to avoid. Did you do anything differently? Were you braking down a steep hill with the battery already full charged? That voltage has to go somewhere… but i’m just guessing.

It might be worth posting on vedder.se forum and seeing what they say - but be as specific as you can on details. Might also send back to Vedder to do VESC autopsy!

GL!

My vesc also went but on the first trial run, in bldc, still waiting to hear from warranty

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Might also send back to Vedder to do VESC autopsy!

I sure Benjamin would love that! Just the other day he was telling me how much free time he has. :sweat_smile:

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LOL - yeah, i know. However i know he’s done this in the past. Not quickly, but still may be worth looking at. When he can get to it…

@EvanAndDadProd wow that’s probably the worst one I’ve ever seen!

I’ve posted the question on vedder.se as suggested. We’ll see what comes out. The thread is here.

this deserves some kind of award. Its as if Lord Skatan reached in and shot fire into the heart of this poor bastard himself.

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Did those heat sinks come with the Enertion VESC? I thought Chaka was the only one that had those.

They were ordered off eBay separately.

@EvanAndDadProd Hi, can i ask how did you stick the haet sink on the vesc?

@kyo: Sure, I used a thermal glue I found on eBay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Halnziye-HY910-10g-Tube-White-Silicone-Thermal-Plaster-Glue-Adhesive-Paste-/121174513266?hash=item1c36905672 It takes a few hours to settle and then it’s relatively robust.

While I’m at it, here are the heatsinks that I used : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-High-Quality-Aluminum-Heat-Sink-For-Memory-Chip-IC-3-Sizes-UK-Seller-/281757356192?var=&hash=item419a0c10a0

Thanks man, appriciate it :smile_cat: