Leaf / leafmotor / leafbike high efficiency 1500w motor

How many phase amps can I use?

I have the 1500W 4T version in a 26" wheel. Adaptto mini controller and 44V battery.

Say in "boost" mode I have up to 65 battery amps. How many phase amps should I set? (Have temp sensor)

And in "normal" mode if I limit to say 1500W, recommended battery and phase amps for that?
 
Well, the real question is how much phase amps your controller can put out..
With my 18FET, i was running a nice 1:2.25 ratio of battery to phase amps, which worked out to 80A battery, 180A phase.


How to get 1500W? divide 1500w by your nominal battery voltage.. and there's the amps you need to get 1500w.
 
Okay though maybe there where som recommended limits on the leaf, but maybe that is no problem with only 65A battery amps. Guess I should ask on the adaptto-topic instead then if there is no limit for the Leaf.


About the 1500W I was just thinking that maybe there are some values for the phase amps there too? Or is it just battery amps? I have read somewhere people saying it is not battery amp that is interesting in watts to motor it is the phase amps, or something like that...
 
More phase amps will basically give better acceleration at low speed.
As you have a temp sensor, you can play around and test.
My experience with the leaf 1500W motor is that it heated up quite fast when run at 50 battery amps, on a 18s battery.
Don't recall phase amp setting but I guess 120A or so.
Accelerations of ~3,5kW. It ran much cooler with 35A limit but still provided good performance.
This was on a heavy cargobike.
 
I have leaf 1500 with midi-e. Pushing 150A and 300A phase in it in boost mode. So around 9kW. It gets hot pretty fast so ferrofluid helps a lot.
Cruise around on Normal with 65A/170A phase.
 
Just as another data point - I'm currently running 40A and 120 phase amps on 48V (3000 watt sinewave controller) - not impressive on a 70+ lb bike with a 205lb rider. It pushes you along nicely and can easily hit 38mph, but it takes a little while getting there (26" wheel, standard motor). I'll try again later this week with a 16S setup and see how things work at those settings.
 
Allex is about right.

I've pushed slightly lower limits with some active fan cooling and the Leaf goes pretty good.

I would say anything up to 10KW with some serious cooling and beefed up phase wires is ok on this motor.

In stock form though (with the 'upgraded' 3mm phase wires :lol: ) I would not push much past 4KW bursts 2KW continuous if it's still fully sealed.

Cheers
 
Well I am bursting those figures with stock 3mm wires =) Did it whole summer. But yeah need to be careful not just WOT up on a 30° hill for 1 minute, they will probably start to melt then.
 
Mine came with the thin wires.. i just cut the phase wires about 1 inch after the axle and soldered on 12 gauge when i did my 6000W power test.. the phase wires held up fine :)

So if you got the thin wires, it's not such a big deal, you can 'fix' that after the fact.
 
Wheazel said:
I would assume you choose the leaf motor for other reasons than performance. If you want to go fast there are better solutions.
Yeah, I chose it for the best balance between performance and weight.
If there was a 40mm wide stator with 0.35mm laminations I probably would have bought that, but the '1500W' Leaf is the closest there is at 35mm wide.

I notice the weight difference moving from my 8.5KG HS4080 to the 7.2KG Leaf, and because the Leaf is 5-10% more efficient it can give similar performance even though it's narrower.

Cheers
 
I bought the motor for power to weight ratio alone. Looked at the dyno graph, saw that it was underrated, had a target speed of 40 miles per hour continuous, and thought.. hell yeah, a 16lb motor that could pull this off? let's give it a try and hope this vendor i've never heard of before wasn't lying .. :lol:

I was also looking at a HS40XX but was turned off by the fact that it was a crystalyte motor in the same series that was known to have weak axles. The efficiency of the HS series was not that great anyhow.
 
cwah said:
What about the mxus v3? It has 45mm stator
Yeah, and it's 9.35KG, a 30% increase in weight from the Leaf. It does have a 28.6% wider stator/magnet to give more power, however depending on the application that may not be worth it.
Up to a point, you can get just as much increase in torque by adding more amps to the narrower/lighter motors, so long as you can deal with the heat generated.
Hence, my forced fan cooling addition to my Leaf, and pumping 6-8KW through it. Happy days. :D

Cheers
 
I am about to place an order for this motor, but I need to know what sort of abuse the 26" rim and spokes they lace it to can tolerate before I decide to part with my money. I am looking to initially run 4kW peak with a 3T wind at 72V/55A with 100A phase current using a Sabvoton sine-wave controller, with top speeds exceeding 45 mph. I just need for the motor and wheel to handle that load in stock form, and if it cannot, order it unlaced and lace my own.

After setting the motor up with active cooling, increasing that peak to 72V/100A with 120A phase current sounds reasonable, but I doubt that a bicycle rim could reliably handle that, and plan to upgrade to a moped rim in the long term.

It will be going on an enclosed KMX trike that is expected to weigh 100 lbs when complete, and the motor will be activated with a torque sensing PAS. With me plus camping gear, I expect a 300lb laden weight. I need a motor that has low enough cogging losses that my velomobile still functions well with a drained battery, and I think this is perhaps the best choice for a hub motor that I will find for my application.

The application spans the spectrum of "daily rider" to "race toy" to "long distance 30+ mph cruiser" and it must be still operable with the motor turned off.
 
I did ride my ready laced motor for maybe 6000km and retightening the spokes 2 times in that time.
Too thick spokes in a bicycle rim. Doesn't matter that it was a dh rim. Still fundamentally wrong building technique.

I recommend lacing it yourself with the correct spoke thickness for a given rim so that you actually can tighten the spokes to a point there they stay put, and you can assure positive tension under all riding conditions. This example was commuting on my cargobike, no crazy offroad riding.
 
You know, i never had problems with their rim at all. It needed serious truing as soon as i got it, but has been solid since.
 
I think I'll order it with the rim laced, have it trued and see how that holds up. I have a 26" rim with 12ga spokes that I could use as a spare. If I succeed in getting some Schwalbe Energizer Solar LRR tires and upgrade to DOT rims, the durability of the stock rim becomes irrelevant. 4kW sounds fun and potentially dangerous, just as long as I can get it reliabiy..

The cogging losses are what I am most interested in studying first hand. They are my biggest remaining concern and I have yet to pedal any hubmotor bike for comparison to a non-assist bike. I know the inertia of the rear wheel will be a lot to overcome when the PAS is turned off. How far can you sustain 20 mph without electric assist on your build? The inertia probably won't be too much of a bother when the conditions allow cruising for miles at a time without a need to stop, but I could see repeated stop and go driving becoming a tiring inconvenience with the drive system turned off.

A 40mm stator version with room to fit a 8sp cassette, built with a thicker axle, thicker phase wires, weight saving case materials, and active cooling from the factory with stronger field-strength magnets would be well worth the price premium on construction costs per unit. Something of roughly equal or lesser weight compared to the 1500W Leafmotor that exists. improved efficiency, and higher peak power capability is possible in the same weight. Maybe 15 kW peaks? That would get interesting. I won't be mutilating mine in the near-term and it is likely to remain stock and never see more than 4kW from the motor until I add what it needs to handle more power, so probably for my first few thousand miles of use.This idea may serve as a future project if Leafbike never does such a common-sense thing and no one here does it first either.

Too bad a smaller/lighter Lynchmotor isn't available.
 
I have kind of done it here first...
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=56965&start=350#p1111068
DSC_2517.jpg


Check the link above for all the details, but that is how I pump 2X the power through my Leaf.

Cheers
 
neptronix said:
You know, i never had problems with their rim at all. It needed serious truing as soon as i got it, but has been solid since.

How much distance have the bike covered? What is the static load on the rim? (weight) How are the surfaces you ride?
What rim type and spoke thickness do you have?

My rim started to slowly micro-crack around the eyelets after being re-trued/retightened twice and the 6000km mentioned.
At this point spokes were starting to give up as well. Typical fatigue breaks in the bend.
 
markz said:
Who has laced up the 1500W into a 24 or 20" setup?
What numbers you getting?
I laced mine into a 24" original Stealth rim with 10g spokes. Direct swap for the HS4065 that burnt out in that rim previous to that.

It's probably got about 3-4000km on it now. I laced single cross following the same pattern Stealth did on the previous HS4065. My Fighter is about 32KG and I am 75KG + all my gear and a spare battery I sometimes carry is another 15KG, so about 125KG. I am brutal to my rim, and so far it's been fine. I would not expect the same from one of the standard Leaf rims, although the Alex rims are pretty good and I use a DM24 20" on my recumbent commuter which has held up well in a radial lace for about 15000km now with 0 issues.
If Leaf bike are using the E-Bike spec rims, I would say you shouldn't have any issues apart from the typical bad lacing job.
http://www.alexrims.com/product-category/e-bike/

Cheers
 
For those putting bicycle spokes on this thing, is the size commonly available like would I be able to get it locally in a big city? 26" MTB rim I mean.
 
I guess what I wanted to know is what are you pushing out of the motor in terms of wattage in a 20" or 24" wheel then I can compare to everyone else rocking a 26" Leaf 1500W
 
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