ESC battery and motor paring

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Henwilled Antweight team
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ESC battery and motor paring

Post by Henwilled Antweight team »

So I am building a beetle that has 6wd.
Each motor has a max current draw of 16A
So I pared each side of drive with a 60A ESC that 60A being continuous, it is 320 A peak
Then the battery is a 75c 2200mah battery.
I am wondering if the ESC is overkill and then the battery overkill, because it is a lot of amps discharge from the battery. Just wondering before I buy it all.
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MarkR
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Re: ESC battery and motor paring

Post by MarkR »

It's not clear if those are brushed or brushless motors, but in any case, brushed motors only draw their maximum current when stalled (i.e. at startup), so you won't get anywhere near the peak current unless all of the motors on one side are stalled, which is probably a bad situation anyway

I think it sounds very overkill (but I never made a Beetle)
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GeorgeR
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Re: ESC battery and motor paring

Post by GeorgeR »

The first question here is are these brushed or brushless motors? Because if they are brushless you will need a separate esc for each motor.
Secondly, yes this sounds like major overkill, even though the motors may be rated for 16a they won't draw that much current for more than a fraction of a second.
Which motors are you planning on using, and what's the rest of the drive train like? (gearbox, wheels etc.)
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Ocracoke
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Re: ESC battery and motor paring

Post by Ocracoke »

In theory, this sounds "OK" to me. I've done something vaguely similar on a Middleweight (which is 20x heavier) in the past where one motor would drive one wheel, each of those motors were tied to a 60A continuous ESC per side. However, what I found was that if it would often lead to motor burnout, I suspect in part due to the drag caused in turning. 60A a side does sound a bit much for a BW though.

I would advocate a simple pair of motors of the sort you are thinking of and perhaps nylon gears or similar to get 6WD because it reduces (in theory) the overall pull through the ESC when moving and turning. I assume the battery is a 3S LiPo? The battery size, to me, sounds a bit over the top but I've never ran anything more than a 2WD machine at the BW scale. Shu! uses a 1500mAh 3S LiFe battery for reference but the draw from that is going to be fairly low. If your weight allowance can take it, there should be no reason why you couldn't use that but I am on the fence with that. The extra drag from the multiple driven wheels may increase the load, and thus the capacity required.

Do you have links to what you are looking at using?
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