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Bafang M600 Motor Engagement Problem - $100 USD Reward to the Person who can Solve This!

HandCyclePhil

🧲 New user
Joined
Nov 12, 2022
Messages
7
Hello everyone,

We're facing a major issue with our Bafang M600 motors and are looking for some expert help. We're offering a $100 USD reward to the first person who can provide a working solution for us.

The Problem:

We're unable to easily engage the motor on our hand cycles. The torque sensor is now incredibly difficult to activate, requiring a lot of effort.

Background:

We've built several hand cycles previously with the same motors and had no problems at all.

Recently, something changed. We believe it might be a change to the settings or a new version of the torque sensor.

The result is that it's now a huge struggle to get the motor to kick in.

Our Goal:

We need to make two specific changes to the motor's settings:

Engage the motor at an earlier, easier stage of pedaling. We need the motor to engage with as little as 5 watts of arm power.

Slow down the ramp-up time. When the motor does engage, we need the assistance to come on more gradually.

What We've Tried:

We have a login to the standard BESST tool and the correct cable for it. However, we've only been able to change the speed limit and wheel size. We are aware of the BESST Tool Pro version, which we do not have access to for the M600.

We've tried installing new torque sensors, and we have also taken material off the inside of the torque sensor on a lathe. While this did provide more watts once engaged, it did not make the motor engage any easier. We don't need more power, just earlier engagement.

User Group:

These hand cycles are used by quadriplegics with very limited hand and arm function. The current difficulty in engaging the motor makes the product unusable for our target audience.

If you have experience with these motors or similar systems and know how to adjust the settings or work around this torque sensor issue, please share your insights. We're eager to get this resolved and get our hand cycles back in the hands of the people who need them.

Thank you in advance for your help!
 
As I understand you have problems with new batch of M600 motors you recently purchased. That could be bad torque sensor (I had bad torque sensor acted weird and even dangerously in new M620 motor, replacing it solved the issue). Maybe try to swap torque sensors between a good working unit and the bad working unit and see if it makes the difference. If it does make the difference you can purchase new torque sensor.

You also can try to contact Luna and ask them if they can sell you their Luna Ludicrous V2 M600 controller. That controller allows to zero the torque sensor and do other adjustments, that might solve your issue

 
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Awesome, this Luna M600 Ludicrous V2 could solve it for us... I will see if they will sell to us... I will update soon
 
We're facing a major issue with our Bafang M600 motors
Is it known, which mikroprocessor is working in this controller? Bafang seems to switch to a new generation of controllers with different processors. I'm just analyzing a new Bafang hub motor controller, that is using a STM32 Clone....
With an open source firmware, we would be able to generate any assistance characteristics we want ;)
The Bafang torque sensor is a weired thing anyway, it generates quadrature PAS pulses, that would be helpful for your start up issue, but they are not used in the Bafang controller hardware 🤪
But the M600 is a CAN system, so you could simply generate the CAN messages for torque and cadence by a blue pill board.
 
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Awesome, this Luna M600 Ludicrous V2 could solve it for us... I will see if they will sell to us... I will update soon
Unfortunately, they don’t have any in stock and can’t sell them to us. I found watts wagon controllers in a search but can’t find where to buy these from.
 
Unfortunately, they don’t have any in stock and can’t sell them to us. I found watts wagon controllers in a search but can’t find where to buy these from.
Watts Wagon Archon X1 controller is also known as Innotrace X1 controller is not for Bafang m600 motor, it is for Bafang m620 motor.

If Luna can not sell those controllers to you then maybe your only hope if someone else will produce it - that controller was open sourced

 
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The torque sensor is now incredibly difficult to activate, requiring a lot of effort.
Do you use the torque sensing really? Or are you happy with simple PAS assistance, that just needs the pedals turning? Or is the problem, to get the first push to generate a first PAS pulse?

We are aware of the BESST Tool Pro version, which we do not have access to for the M600.
Are you aware of the canable project? This gives you full access to the controller for 30€ (or even less, if you solder the cable yourself ;))
 
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As I understand you have problems with new batch of M600 motors you recently purchased. That could be bad torque sensor (I had bad torque sensor acted weird and even dangerously in new M620 motor, replacing it solved the issue). Maybe try to swap torque sensors between a good working unit and the bad working unit and see if it makes the difference. If it does make the difference you can purchase new torque sensor.

You also can try to contact Luna and ask them if they can sell you their Luna Ludicrous V2 M600 controller. That controller allows to zero the torque sensor and do other adjustments, that might solve your issue

 
Hi there, thank you so much for your message and advice. We’ve already replaced the torque sensors with new ones several times, but unfortunately that hasn’t solved the issue. We haven’t yet tried taking a torque sensor out of a good unit and putting it into a bad one to confirm if it’s specifically sensor-related, but that might be worth trying.


We’ve also looked into the Luna Ludicrous V2 controller, but unfortunately they aren’t able to sell to us—and even if they could, they currently don’t have stock available—so that option is ruled out for now.


Thanks again for sharing your experience and pointing us in the right direction.
 
Do you use the torque sensing really? Or are you happy with simple PAS assistance, that just needs the pedals turning? Or is the problem, to get the first push to generate a first PAS pulse?


Are you aware of the canable project? This gives you full access to the controller for 30€ (or even less, if you solder the cable yourself ;))
Do you use the torque sensing really? Or are you happy with simple PAS assistance, that just needs the pedals turning? Or is the problem, to get the first push to generate a first PAS pulse?


Are you aware of the canable project? This gives you full access to the controller for 30€ (or even less, if you solder the cable yourself ;))
Thanks for your reply. The pedal PAS would actually be fine to get things started—if we can get the motor engaging with just PAS, that would be a big help. Then the torque sensor can come into play for those who are stronger and able to activate it, so this approach could work well for us.


The Canable project also sounds like it could suit us perfectly. From the little I’ve read and from the video I watched, it really looks like it might sort us out. I’ll definitely get onto this.


Really appreciate you taking the time to share this—it’s a huge help, thank you! I’ll update the thread once I’ve had a chance to try this out, and if it solves the issue I’ll be sure to report back.
 
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