BionX seems te be locked in regenerating mode

Frankyboy

Frankyboy

10 µW
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Mar 17, 2019
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My BionX P-350 motor stopped working and seems to be locked in a regenerating mode. There is a huge drag on the hub and you can hardly turn it as if it is a very strong dynamo. No sound of problems with the bearings or whatsoever and feels like the magnets and generating this resistance. I can power up the system and even connect it to the BBI2 software but I don't know what could cause this. The strange thing is that this drag will not disappear when the motor is disconnected from the cables.

Any suggestions or people who had this some malfunction? Would there be a short circuit internal because it feels like if you test the wireing of a three phase motor by connecting two of the three wires. This also generate a magnetic drag
 
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For a normal hub motor you could unplug the phase cables and see if the resistance goes away. That would tell you if the short is inside the hub or not.

For Bionx, the controller is inside the hub, so that's not an option. There's a good video by Grin on how to open one up and covert it to a regular motor hub, though. I suppose that's the best option.
 
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Frankyboy said:
My BionX P-350 motor stopped working and seems to be locked in a regenerating mode. There is a huge drag on the hub and you can hardly turn it as if it is a very strong dynamo. No sound of problems with the bearings or whatsoever and feels like the magnets and generating this resistance. I can power up the system and even connect it to the BBI2 software but I don't know what could cause this. The strange thing is that this drag will not disappear when the motor is disconnected from the cables.

Any suggestions or people who had this some malfunction? Would there be a short circuit internal because it feels like if you test the wireing of a three phase motor by connecting two of the three wires. This also generate a magnetic drag
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What was happening when the motor failed? Were you climbing a hill or something else creating a high load. Sounds like a short in the windings or controller, possibly caused by heat.
 
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Most likely one or more of the internal controller's FETs has failed shorted. Alternately, one or more of the motor phase wires (or windings) overheated, causing hte insulation to fail and allowing a short to another phase. (this would probalby blow up the FETs too).

To test anything you would have to disassemble the motor, as none of the things you need to test are accessible from outside the motor casing.

There are a number of BionX motor threads showing the internals, and some that show opening it, if you poke around for BionX.
 
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lnanek said:
For a normal hub motor you could unplug the phase cables and see if the resistance goes away. That would tell you if the short is inside the hub or not.

For Bionx, the controller is inside the hub, so that's not an option. There's a good video by Grin on how to open one up and covert it to a regular motor hub, though. I suppose that's the best option.
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I have seen those but I like the Bionx feel and would rather look for a new wheel or try to repair it.
 
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E-HP said:
What was happening when the motor failed? Were you climbing a hill or something else creating a high load. Sounds like a short in the windings or controller, possibly caused by heat.
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I just started using this wheel and did some successful test rides and said my wife I upgraded her bike from the other older Bionx wheel. This one had a higher topspeed.

But when she wanted to use it the next day it had this problem from the first instance. So nothing happened just turning it off and on.
 
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Frankyboy said:
My BionX P-350 motor stopped working and seems to be locked in a regenerating mode. There is a huge drag on the hub and you can hardly turn it as if it is a very strong dynamo. No sound of problems with the bearings or whatsoever and feels like the magnets and generating this resistance. I can power up the system and even connect it to the BBI2 software but I don't know what could cause this. The strange thing is that this drag will not disappear when the motor is disconnected from the cables.

Any suggestions or people who had this some malfunction? Would there be a short circuit internal because it feels like if you test the wireing of a three phase motor by connecting two of the three wires. This also generate a magnetic drag
Click to expand...
So the strange thing is that the problem started literally overnight.

Does anyone know if the BBI2 software has any options to diagnose a failure like this? Mine has all the debug options available but among the many many parameters I could find a problem or solution.
 
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There are environmental issues that could cause a siezed motor, such as water intrusion--it can corrode things, mechanically and electrically. It can happen months after the intrusion originally occured. Bearings could fail and seize, or windings could corrode and short to each other or to the laminations, or FETs / traces / etc on the controller could corrode and short.

Overheating could cause a failure after it's parked, if the heat didn't reach the part that failed until after it was generated.



I don't know what options you have (you could screenshot them, and we could see if anything looks like the right type of term, but there's no guarantee that even if it has a readout for this kind of fault it would be labelled in a non-proprietary-term (that could appear to mean something totally different than what it really is).

But most likely this is a test a human has to do with a multimeter from inside the motor, at the phase wire connections to the controller.

To test if it is blown FETs, disconnect the phase wires from the controller (only two of three need be, then there is no current path). If it rotates freely afterward (presuming reassembly) then the controller has failed; it might be repairable, if it is *just* the FETs, as you could replace all the FETs in the controller with something at least as good as the ones that are in there (same or higher Vds, same or higher Ids, same type of gate input, etc).

If it still feels stuck, then it's a winding or phase wire short. Winding issues could be fixed by unwinding and rewinding the motor, but you should take careful note of all the winding patterns and numbers of turns, etc., and rewind it identically, so the controller can correctly operate the motor.

Phase wire shorts usually happen only from overheating, in this type of internal controller motor, and only if the phase wires are bundled together at some point in their run, so that melting the insulation could cause a short. If they don't run in the same place, it's pretty unlikely to happen.
 
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