Leaf / leafmotor / leafbike high efficiency 1500w motor

Baron said:
Is 16*4t the fastest wind they offer? does anyone know if they do a faster wind, 3t?
99% sure they make a 3t version; for what it's worth, the 5t I think has the highest copper fill by 1 strand of all of them. It's the main reason why I went with it originally.
 
Baron said:
Is 16*4t the fastest wind they offer? does anyone know if they do a faster wind, 3t?

Don't buy a 3t if it exists, unless you have a 16 or 20 inch wheel. It is just going to be way too fast of a winding. You'd need a 24fet to drive it to it's potential ( >100A ) and even 48v would be too high of a voltage for it in a 26" wheel, lol.
 
What about a Sabvoton 48v/150a and a 17" wheel?
 
So the cassette Leafbike provides - really not safe to expand out to increase the inner diameter. 12mm is the maximum you can run through the thing due to design. Per my build thread, it's starting to look like I'll have to build my own from scratch if I want to expand to 15mm through the cassette. Honestly I'd prefer to go larger if I can, but figured I'd ask here first; think a 12mm shaft of 4340 on the cassette side would be "enough" for this or should I go all-out and build the ultimate mouse trap?
 
By the way, dudes..

I upgrade to a MXUS v2 3T and just rode it for the first time yesterday.
It seems to not be leaps and bounds ahead of the leaf 4T. It still gets a it warm hot on the same ride at the same speeds ( i used a much taller tire to get within -1mph of the speed that the leaf puts out ). There seems to be more torque ( stiffer, broader torque band ) outputted per watt, but it's not a huge difference.
I can also accidentally lift the front end at a slightly higher speed..

But i thought that 10mm of extra stator would mean that it ran very cool, not just a bit cooler than the leaf.

This is just anecdotal.. not based on anything scientific, just hand measurements and feels.

I'll probably just stick with the mxus and shelf my leaf motor as a backup motor. The MXUS will probably run juuuust cool enough to handle my 45mph requirements. :)
 
Thanks for the comparison Nep. That's especially great for me as I was deliberating between the MXUS and Leaf for a while...not that they are directly comparable performance wise(i.e. not apples to apples), but my plan with getting either motor revolved around active cooling (yet to be done to my Leaf) so the extra weight of the MXUS was a draw back.

Speaking of heat, I got my Leaf motor the hottest it's been yet last night. A connection on my hall sensor wires was on the fritz and caused intermittent shuddering, causing the motor to get quite hot. By the time I got home and let the motor sit for a few min, the side covers were at 75C. :shock:
So I got the motor spinning slowly and sprayed with water...cooled it down to 40C in a matter of min. Motor still runs fine and rode to work on it this morning. :)
I really need to get a move on and vent this thing at a minimum...given the load I place on this motor with my heavy(ish) Fighter, I'm at risk of melting it if I don't cool it soon...summer is around the corner here in Aus.

Cheers
 
I upgrade to a MXUS v2 3T and just rode it for the first time yesterday.
It seems to not be leaps and bounds ahead of the leaf 4T.

Good to know, solidifies my 4T purchase.

The leaf motor is decent too, just wonder what the diameter and weight differences are.
 
Scratch what I said earlier. Think I can actually run a 15mm shaft through the cassette now after breaking through the surface hardened diameter. Gonna start the shaft tomorrow so long as my band saw can cut through 4340 fine. Otherwise I may need to buy new blades. :p
 
markz said:
I upgrade to a MXUS v2 3T and just rode it for the first time yesterday.
It seems to not be leaps and bounds ahead of the leaf 4T.

Good to know, solidifies my 4T purchase.

The leaf motor is decent too, just wonder what the diameter and weight differences are.

2lb difference. the mxus also only takes a single speed freewheel, whereas the leaf will take a 7 speed. There ya go.

Both fit in a 135mm dropout just the same.

So if you want pedaling ability, you want the leaf ( and the motor has very low cogging resistance, so it's useful for that ).
If you want a bit more power, go with the mxus.
 
Looks like you have to update your sig now Nep... :p
 
(Copied from my build thread, but relevant because it's motor guts):

Update - 2015/09/15 - Popped the motor open today, looks very clean; in fact, maybe cleaner than Neptronix's motor.
i-2mPG2MZ-L.jpg


...Aside from this random piece of copper wire.... :shock:
i-Xx6VVTw-L.jpg



One of the halls doesn't look perfectly aligned...
i-nLvQK4c-L.jpg


The rest are OK, though not as far out as they could be. There's slots for halls on the other side of the stator as well; I may order a few and swap out all of them with new ones aligned correctly; we shall see...
i-h2wbbst-L.jpg

Also note the temp sensor poking out from under the windings... Hey there little guy!

Pulled the freewheel cover and magnets with this arrangement. Single-speed freewheel is a beast, I doubt it was damaged in the slightest from the (mis)treatment.
i-FfJRzzR-L.jpg


There was ZERO gap between any of my magnets, meaning they cut the right diameter for my motor; Neptronix's had had an issue where there was a gap, this just means that his can was fractionally larger in diameter than was optimal.

Only issue I see is one of my magnets is missing a tiny corner:
i-Ss4bSdd-L.jpg


Oddly, the vanes were machined down on the ends on the freewheel cover. I have no idea why; I don't think there's anything even remotely near that they can hit...
i-Th6whjK-L.jpg


I turned down a water pipe coupler and cut a slot in it to avoid the cable bundle; should let me (eventually) press the bearing out of the brake-side cover without mangling the wire bundles.
i-xWrdhWz-L.jpg


Makes enough contact with the inner race of the bearing that it should allow me to slide-hammer or press it out; my next challenge is figuring out how to support the darn side cover with enough surface area that it A: doesn't distort, and B: pops the bearing. Seems like either they pressed in the bearings with a crap-ton of force, or they used some sort of glue or locktite.
 
Nice.. i'd rather have the imperfections of your motor than mine tho..
My magnet gap really didn't make the motor run funny or anything.. it runs smooth as can be. I'm actually rather surprised by that, as the gap looks to be about 2mm.

Good thing you opened yours before you ran it, lol.
 
neptronix said:
Nice.. i'd rather have the imperfections of your motor than mine tho..
My magnet gap really didn't make the motor run funny or anything.. it runs smooth as can be. I'm actually rather surprised by that, as the gap looks to be about 2mm.

Good thing you opened yours before you ran it, lol.

Yeah, the difference is probably fractions of a millimeter in diameter larger than it should be. Highly negligable.
 
This is taken from my cargobike thread, I am hoping someone can throw some light on the events I find strange.

Yesterday I discovered something unexpected. I had around 180kms on the tripgauge and it was getting time for a charge.
I wanted to burn some more energy to see how much capacity I had in reality, so I put boostmode on and started to drive around and wasting energy.
Pulling 3-4kw repeatedly.
Motor warmed up from the abuse and reached around 100C at the peak. I was unsure about how high I could warm it up safely so I stoped there.
When I got back the battery was close to drained (had noticed a faster drop in voltage indicating the discharge graph-slope).
Wanted to check noload speed at this point, and was shocked to see ~100km/h noload. I immidiately thought I had overheated the motor and lost some magnet strength.

But then I started thinking and came to the conclusion that my previous noload test was done straight after adaptto autotune.
So I did one of those again, and it ended up on pretty much the same values as the first autotune. Noload was back down to around 75km/h.

So now I am confused about what winding I actually got. The settings I use are obviously the most efficient ones for the type of use the motor sees, but whats up with the 100km/h noload?
Worth mentioning is that noload current is high at 7-8A with the settings I use.
I have the OVS timing set to zero.

Leafbike told me that the motor could handle up to 200C in an email today, so I did not harm the motor unless the tempsensor readings are x2 off. Nothing indicates this to be the case.


I am using a 26" wheel so 75km/h noload should be like 600rpm. My battery is 18s, at the drained state I measured last noload the voltage was around 65V.
 
Typically from what I've read, (correct me if I'm wrong guys,) you don't want to go over 75C if you can with neodymium magnets; they start weakening in a temporary state up through either 100 or 120C, and will generally snap back to full power as they cool when operated in that range, but will lose power permanently if you go over that.
 
So I've been eyeing the 16t in the 20" wheel (16" rim) but I'm wary of the radial lacing. I've read here that it is prone to failure after a while because the radial lacing doesn't handle torque as well as cross lacing styles. But on the other hand I've seen wheel builds with mxus 3k and higher power motors with radial lacing. What do you all think?

from the leafbike website: Spoke: 12 gauge / 72mm Length
 
Depends on what style of rim you're going to use and what size spokes. Stock holes can be drilled out (CAREFULLY!) to accommodate 3.5mm if you need, don't go any larger IMHO. As it is that's decent size motorcycle spoke territory... If you're doing that get a 17" motorcycle rim and try to do a cross pattern with alternating spokes going inner/outer on the motor flanges. I'm no expert wheel builder, so if this is terrible advice, please chime in guys. :)
 
Kodin said:
Depends on what style of rim you're going to use and what size spokes. Stock holes can be drilled out (CAREFULLY!) to accommodate 3.5mm if you need, don't go any larger IMHO. As it is that's decent size motorcycle spoke territory... If you're doing that get a 17" motorcycle rim and try to do a cross pattern with alternating spokes going inner/outer on the motor flanges. I'm no expert wheel builder, so if this is terrible advice, please chime in guys. :)

I meant the 20" from their website already laced in a rim.
 
That'd be a decent wheel size, no idea on that particular configuration as I'm not familiar with anyone having purchased one yet. Either way, when you get the wheel, get it trued and tensioned correctly; they have been known to arrive a bit out-of-whack. It'll help keep it from failing early. I'm sure that size would be effing loony when it comes to torque-to-the-ground.
 
Wheazel said:
So now I am confused about what winding I actually got. The settings I use are obviously the most efficient ones for the type of use the motor sees, but whats up with the 100km/h noload?
Worth mentioning is that noload current is high at 7-8A with the settings I use.
I have the OVS timing set to zero.

adaptto PWR timing also has an effect on (no load) speed. if you have such high consumption the settings are not optimal.
do you have wireR PHC on and kV set?
 
madin88 said:
Wheazel said:
So now I am confused about what winding I actually got. The settings I use are obviously the most efficient ones for the type of use the motor sees, but whats up with the 100km/h noload?
Worth mentioning is that noload current is high at 7-8A with the settings I use.
I have the OVS timing set to zero.

adaptto PWR timing also has an effect on (no load) speed. if you have such high consumption the settings are not optimal.
do you have wireR PHC on and kV set?


I have not touched these values, and was under the impression they would be set during autodetect, if i remeber the instruction manual correctly.
However I have always wondered what the kV number actually does.
Wire resistance is displayed as 188mOhm (seems accurate with what John in CR wrote in the cargobike thread: It's got 6-8 times the copper resistance of the Revolt 120)
It is set at 7685.
Wire R PHC is set to NO.

Please enlighten me of what these settings do :)
 
i do not know what the kV number does, but i always do it like this:
go in menu where you see kV number, apply throttle, the number will change. than i set wireRphc to "yes"
for Cromotor and MXUS i found out PWR timing value of 1-2 will give me best efficiency and power. the leaf has similar stator design so i would start at same values for fine tuning.
hall angle and ind timing i would not touch after autodetect.
if you still have such high consumption than, there could be a problem with the motor itself like one hall that is not installed correct or a short somewhere at the windings..
good luck!
 
madin88 said:
i do not know what the kV number does, but i always do it like this:
go in menu where you see kV number, apply throttle, the number will change. than i set wireRphc to "yes"
for Cromotor and MXUS i found out PWR timing value of 1-2 will give me best efficiency and power. the leaf has similar stator design so i would start at same values for fine tuning.
hall angle and ind timing i would not touch after autodetect.
if you still have such high consumption than, there could be a problem with the motor itself like one hall that is not installed correct or a short somewhere at the windings..
good luck!

Many thanks!
Its strange cause I have good efficiency when riding with these settings (a few % less wh than autotune setting for the riding i do), its just the noload thats abnormally high and current consuming.
I will do the steps you entioned and see if it changes anything, I could also simply go closer to the angle settings that are given from autotune.
 
Wait... yours came with a direction-of-rotation sticker?! Lucky!
 
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