Controller reliability? help

le15otl

100 W
Joined
Feb 24, 2015
Messages
147
Location
Gloucestershire, England
In the last couple of months I have somehow blown 2 cyclone controllers which i am pretty annoyed about. They were both from cyclone and are 40A rated (100A burst) controllers one rated to 60v other was up to 72v.

Both had the same symptom - randomly stopping entirely, and there is a small click from the controller when I turn the throttle now. Also they had worked much harder previously than at the moment they failed (first failure I was just slowly cruising along on flat)

I am a little confused about current limiting in e bike controllers. I admit I did push the motor really hard up hills and accelerating, because I thought that if it was going over the rated current it would reduce the output to save the FETs. I was under the impression that normally you cannot destroy a controller by demanding too much from your motor? unlike RC ESCs of course. Is that wrong?


I am very reluctant to buy another cyclone controller and am probably either going to get a Lyen 12FET 72v or this infineon 12FET which seems similar http://em3ev.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=82

But with either of those controllers will I still have the possibility of breaking them or do I in fact have to be careful with controllers?
I ideally want something which won't fail randomly and can be pushed hard without worry, will the infineon be able to do that?
If that might fail randomly I might as well get another cheaper 40A cyclone.


I'd really appreciate some controller knowledge.

Thanks
 
I have never had a infineon controller fail, and I have had setup and suppied/used maybe 20 - 30 of them ( 6fet and 12fet ) on various projects of my own and for other people , ranging from "normal e-bike" performance upto pushing 5-6kw on the 12fet controllers. I have also never had any other make control fail of my own . The only thing I would suggest if you get a infineon is to make sure you turn the overcurrent delay down to 0.0s this then makes the infineons bullet proof but also as long as you keep within the max current limits of the fets that are installed . if you have gone through 2 cyclone controllers then the cyclone controllers are very badly designed ( or just very badly made ) plus you may have a underlined problem with your motor/wiring . I would check the motor wiring for fractured wires or bad plugs and sockets or to at least confirm that the cyclone controllers are totally shot before you spend any more money.
No you are not wrong, the controller should do what ever it needs to do to protect itself from going faulty.

edit: on a side note.. are you 100% sure that the hall/phase wire combo is the correct one ?
 
Controllers come with watt ratings and max amp ratings. The max amp rating does not mean you can run the controller at that rating for long periods of time, just that it can pull that amp amount. The watt rating of the controller is what you must not exceed for extended periods of time or you will burn the controller up. I think I cover most of that here.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=74403
Lets say you have a 12 fet 1000W controller with a max amps of 50A and you use a 100V battery pack. Pulling more than 10A is exceeding the watt rating, so if you run at say 50A continuous (5000W) you will burn the controller up sooner or later.Probably sooner in this scenario.
 
wesnewell said:
Controllers come with watt ratings and max amp ratings. The max amp rating does not mean you can run the controller at that rating for long periods of time, just that it can pull that amp amount. The watt rating of the controller is what you must not exceed for extended periods of time or you will burn the controller up. I think I cover most of that here.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=74403
Lets say you have a 12 fet 1000W controller with a max amps of 50A and you use a 100V battery pack. Pulling more than 10A is exceeding the watt rating, so if you run at say 50A continuous (5000W) you will burn the controller up sooner or later.Probably sooner in this scenario.

Sorry dont agree with this watts is watts it should not matter .. if its rated at 1000W then thats what it should be able to do @ what ever the voltage rating is of the said controller A 50A@ 100v is not a 1000W controller, the only thing that you should watch is the temp of the controller.
 
You can disagree all you want, but that's how they are made. Every controller I've ever had would draw more watts at max amps than they were rated for. My first controller was 48V rated at 500W, but had a max amp value of 30A. A charged 48V lead battery is ~53V. 53 x 30 = 1590W. The motor that came with it was also rated at 500W. After I modified the controller, it had a max amp value of 45A, but it was still just a 500W controller.
 
wesnewell said:
You can disagree all you want, but that's how they are made. Every controller I've ever had would draw more watts at max amps than they were rated for. My first controller was 48V rated at 500W, but had a max amp value of 30A. A charged 48V lead battery is ~53V. 53 x 30 = 1590W. The motor that came with it was also rated at 500W. After I modified the controller, it had a max amp value of 45A, but it was still just a 500W controller.

ok just agree to disagree...

That depends on the controllers that you have had and watt firmware they are running and not how they are made.. default infineon controllers are programmed to over shoot ( i always turn this off ) but once running they limit the current to the spec of the controller i.e a 48v 1000w controller limits the current to 20A .. try holding the throttle at WOT then put a load on the wheels it will limit the current to what ever its set to the rated wattage of teh controller and in the case of a 48v 1000W controller that is 20A ... a lot of controllers have this free for all current for maybe only a fraction of a second but its this free for all that tend to blow contollers . if you turn off the overshoot in a infineon then the max current you ever see is what it is set to so no over shoot

and 99% of all controllers ( various makes ) that I have come across/repaired/upgraded/used this is the case.
 
That's just BS. I had an infinion EB215. It came unmodified with default programming and was rated for 48V 1000W. It came with a 30A max current value. it would draw more than 1500W from the getgo and I never changed it. It didn't even have a programming port wired in. Even the smallest controllers will have max amp values far exceeding their rated values. It ludicrous to think that a variable speed controller would be limited to its rated wattage. That would mean a 250W rated 48V controller was only capable of 5A. Check any of the ones here for default values.
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/313864
 
wesnewell said:
That's just BS. I had an infinion EB215. It came unmodified with default programming and was rated for 48V 1000W. It came with a 30A max current value. it would draw more than 1500W from the getgo and I never changed it. It didn't even have a programming port wired in. Even the smallest controllers will have max amp values far exceeding their rated values. It ludicrous to think that a variable speed controller would be limited to its rated wattage. That would mean a 250W rated 48V controller was only capable of 5A. Check any of the ones here for default values.
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/313864

ok if you think is BS thats fine... I dont have anything to prove to you, a current limit is what it is and there is no getting away from that. If a controller dont limit the current then it a rubbish controller , if it says 20A ..30A..40A it dont matter as this is what it will limit it at and it dont matter what voltage you run the controller at it will still limit at the same current so most controller are NOT wattage limited.. What is the point of a current limit on a controller if you say that it dont current limit.. the clue was in what the default settings are set for on the infineon's..

the only thing that should make a well designed/assembled/setup controller fail is heat ..
 
Thanks for the info. :D
Your good experience with infineon controllers and their bullet-proofness is reassuring I think I'll go for a 12 FET 36-72v

Strangely it doesn't say the power rating on the infineon page...


And I am pretty sure the wiring is fine but that's just because it worked, seeing as I didn't know the hall wires I had to try different combinations until the motor turned smoothly (I'm guessing there is just one combination of hall wires which works?)
If there was bad wiring wouldn't it affect the motor rather than blowing the controller, or could it potentially break a controller?

I should def get a programmer to set delay to 0.0, i really want it to be bullet proof!
However I already have a USBasp and FTDI programmer, is that all their programmer is?
 
The control processor (Infineon) has nothing to do with the power rating of the motor controller. It's just a signal processor. The only power that will run through it is the operational power of the chip. It's how the rest of the controller board is built that will set the operational values of the controller. That includes everything from the fets used right down to the size of the tracks for the phases. Infineon has nothing to do with that. The board manufacturer designs the controller board. Most 12 fet (4110, 4410, whatever) controllers I've seen are limited to ~1000W continuous operating power before they will burn up something at some point. So if you have enough battery to maintain higher than 1000W long enough, you will burn them up just like the other controllers you burned up, regardless of the control processor used. The actual control processor will likely not suffer any damage. Most of the time it will be the fets that blow since they are what supply the actual power. The more you have the larger the controller, which means it can dissipate heat better. So if you plan on running at 2000W or higher for more than a few minutes, you may want to consider a controller with more fets if you want it to last. And make sure it has good ventilation in open air. IOW's, a 12fet 72V 50A controller run at max amps continuously isn't going to last long.
 
yes a ftdi serial converter should do the job... you can get what people call a false positive with the wire combos so the only true way to see if you have a good wire combo is to test the no-load current at WOT and for a 'run of the mill' hub it should be definitely no more than 2A ( prob around 1.5A or even lower), a false positive can end up pulling many times more than this ( no load ) and cause a strain on the controller, the phase currents can also be a lot higher than normal and as the controller would be working out of its designed working parameters ( the timing ) things can go pop at any time without warning. the bike may appear to run normal but the noload rpm tends to be much higher than it should be with a false positive combo power will be lower when loaded and the motor and controller will heat up more , of coarse none of this applies if you have a sensorless controller, there can be upto 3 possible combinations that MAY run the motor in each direction ( dependent on motor ) but only 1 would be the correct one.
 
wesnewell said:
The control processor (Infineon) has nothing to do with the power rating of the motor controller. It's just a signal processor. The only power that will run through it is the operational power of the chip. It's how the rest of the controller board is built that will set the operational values of the controller. That includes everything from the fets used right down to the size of the tracks for the phases. Infineon has nothing to do with that. The board manufacturer designs the controller board. Most 12 fet (4110, 4410, whatever) controllers I've seen are limited to ~1000W continuous operating power before they will burn up something at some point. So if you have enough battery to maintain higher than 1000W long enough, you will burn them up just like the other controllers you burned up, regardless of the control processor used. The actual control processor will likely not suffer any damage. Most of the time it will be the fets that blow since they are what supply the actual power. The more you have the larger the controller, which means it can dissipate heat better. So if you plan on running at 2000W or higher for more than a few minutes, you may want to consider a controller with more fets if you want it to last. And make sure it has good ventilation in open air. IOW's, a 12fet 72V 50A controller run at max amps continuously isn't going to last long.

Im sorry only only read the first line.. then realised you don't really understand about modern tech...

All my high powered setups are 12fet controllers running at around 6-7kw and for some of my applications this will be for maybe 70% of the running time and I have never burnt a controller up or had one fail on me .. so you are talking from very limited experience .. the trick is you need to know what parameters you can change and to what values and what effects of those firmware changes will have, Yes it do depend on the hardware to how far you can push it but its the firmware contained in the "control processor" that protects the hardware .

maybe we both have been a little side tracked in terminology .. and it may be possible that we are discussing two separate things, so perhaps we should just leave it there.
 
Yeah, I could see how that might work in the UK where average temps are ~50F, and you only run about 10 minutes at 6.5KW. That's about how long a 1Kwh battery pack would last at those power rates. Wouldn't work long here with temps over 100F.
 
wesnewell said:
Yeah, I could see how that might work in the UK where average temps are ~50F, and you only run about 10 minutes at 6.5KW. That's about how long a 1Kwh battery pack would last at those power rates. Wouldn't work long here with temps over 100F.


Thats on a indoor race track so no where near that cold .. and it dont get that cold here anyway -50F !! maybe average temps in the summer of around 60-70F...yes you are about right at the run times thou ..
 
That was about 50F, ~50F I wrote, not minus 50F, -50F. Big difference. :)
 
That's interesting I never did check the no load current.... seemed to run through some 0.5a wire on testing though.
I will check that on the next controller in case that was the cause of breaking the FETs. I kinda hope it wasn't that.
Thanks for that vital information

Not really sure who to trust on power ratings with the disagreement haha but I think either way the infineon 12 FET should be suitable :) My logic says amps=heat voltage doesn't..
 
le15otl said:
That's interesting I never did check the no load current.... seemed to run through some 0.5a wire on testing though.
I will check that on the next controller in case that was the cause of breaking the FETs. I kinda hope it wasn't that.
Thanks for that vital information

Not really sure who to trust on power ratings with the disagreement haha but I think either way the infineon 12 FET should be suitable :) My logic says amps=heat voltage doesn't..

Im not recomending pushing 7kw though a 12fet :mrgreen: but 2-3kw should be fine and still bullet proof .. like i said eariler in this thread watts is watts and watts is a combination of volts and amps .. 10A @ 10v = 100W .. 1A @ 100v still = 100W ...
 
just a dumb mistake.
 
sorry dont see your point ? VI=W

Didnt I type 10v @ 10A = 100W .. 1v @ 100A still = 100W 10x10=100 is the same as 1x100=100 :!:

but it looks like you are getting the hang of how to use a calculator because what you typed is also correct 100V x 10A = 1000W .. so you must be learning something :wink:
 
Sorry. My mistake. I thought you typed 10A x 100V =100W. Your last edit and little dig does prove to me the type of person you are though.
 
thats ok.. I sort of guessed that what may of happend , but i had to re-read my post about 3 or 4 times just incase I did do a typo :mrgreen:
 
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