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Smoked 3 month old VESC - What did I do wrong?

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cjjohnson97
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Last seen: 2 years 2 weeks ago
VESC Original
Joined: 2020-03-04 00:29
Posts: 4
Smoked 3 month old VESC - What did I do wrong?

As the Subject suggests, I appear to have smoked my VESC today. It is a VESC 6 from TRAMPA that I have been using to balance my custom onewheel build. I have just recently got to the point where I can actually move my motors and what not, but I have always been having the balance app go into 'fault' mode, which basically just disables outputs to the motors as far as I can tell. I haven't been able to get very good logging yet to figure out what my actual current draw is and what not, but based on some tests I did, I think for the majority of the time I run this, I am only drawing ~20-30 amps, but I have large current spikes that go above 100 amps.

 

As to what happened, Yesterday I added a 'fault dealy' to try to see if that was part of my issue. The onewheel worked a lot better and I was able to ride it maybe 50 yards continuously. After those 50 yards it was running way worse than before. I decided that was enough testing for the day and let it go to sleep in my trunk. Today when I tried to turn it on, it didn't. I tried to connect via USB, and it also wouldn't connect, and said I needed to make sure the vesc had power etc. I could visually see none of the LED's on the VESC on. At that point I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. When I started to reconnect the battery there was a spark along my quick disconnect. My 60 amp automotive fuse didn't blow but I could smell some magic smoke(no visual smoke). At this point I checked the battery volage and it was in the middle of its range at 23V, and I disconnected the motors. I tried one more time to connect power, again sparks and I smelled a little more magic smoke smell(but no visual smoke). I took the VESC apart a bit and the smell is coming from the fett/shunt area. Has anyone seen this before? Is it likely to be fixed with just a resoldering? and what do I need to do to stop it from happening again?

I can provide some information on what currents/duty cycles I was using if you request specific numbers. I am very new to all this VESC stuff so I don't know what all the numbers mean yet.

velolac
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Last seen: 6 days 10 hours ago
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Joined: 2019-11-03 09:57
Posts: 41

Hi,

It's an "umbrella after rain" situation, but it was not a good move to delay the fault. Basically you have switched off the systems safety by delaying the fault reaction, so the problem of too high abs current lasted longer and enough to fry something.