Ebike Controller/RC Motor Heat

Hey all,
I was wondering if any of you have experience running Ebike style controllers on RC outrunner motors like a Tacon Bigfoot 160 245KV. The 2kw motor controller from sunwin that I have bought seems to be heating my motor up significantly. I am running the motor with external hall sensors and I have a heatsink mounted to the stator. The controller seems to pull above 2kw from the battery when looking at my Wattmeter. I was running a VESC on the bike at around the same power level and it didnt seem to heat the motor up as much as the ebike controller is. I also noticed that the VESC will ramp up the wattage based on load or something while the ebike controller seems to want shove 2kw into the motor even with no load on it.

Is the heat problem I am having because of an improper application of the ebike controller on an RC motor due to the different characteristics of the RC motor or is it something else?

Thanks!

If you're having high curents with no load, then most likely the hall sensors are either spaced (timed) improperly for the controller, or they are wired in the wrong order vs the phase wires.

If the previous controller worked with a very low no-load current using the same hall sensors, then it's probably not their spacing or timing, as long as the new controller uses the same "angle" (usually 60 or 120), and it is more likely to be the ordering of the hall wires relative to the phases.


There is a thread for Adding Hall Sensors to RC Outrunners (or something like that) that can help with the first problem.

There is a thread for How To Deterimine The Wiring For A Brushless Motor (or similar) that can help with the second.

I was further testing the controller and found that it is heating up the phase wires and the motor coils while I was drawing 15A from the batteries. The VESC was able to run at high currents while not heating up the wires of the motor. I was also running the motor sensorless on the vesc.

The controller I have has a self study feature which should allow me to pick any motor wire config + hall config and have commutation but I will try out some different combinations. The controller also can run the motor sensorlessly although I believe it puts a limit on the max ERPM.

Does it run hot in sensorless mode? If not, then something is probably wrong with the placement of the halls (or timing, etc).

amberwolf said:

Does it run hot in sensorless mode? If not, then something is probably wrong with the placement of the halls (or timing, etc).

Click to expand...

It runs hot in both modes.
I used this guide to try and find a good hall/phase wire combo. I ran the motor first without running the self study function to see if the motor moves and then ran the controllers's self study. Motor still ran hot in every configuration.

If it runs hot in sensorless mode then I don't know what's causing it, unless the controller simply can't deal well with how this motor is wound.