New Mac Motors and Infineon controllers?

Spacey

100 kW
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May 15, 2010
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Odd one this, I bought a load of Mac 500W Geared rear motors from Cell Man which all arrived safe and sound (and on time).

Now I also ordered a controller from him for use with one of the motors at 48V (16ah 48v Headway Pack), this works great, nice top end and gets there pretty quick.

I also have another build that uses a 12ah 36v Headway pack but needs Cycle Analyst so I bought a 25amp 36v Infineon controller from Ebikes.ca.....

the ebikes.ca Infineon controller runs really rough compared to the one that I got from cell man and I remember having a load of trouble a few weeks earlier trying to get another Infineon (40amp 48v) controller to work with these Mac 500w geared motors and they also ran rough.

I am sure the ebikes.ca controller is 100% working, as is the Mac motor, but on I was having to use 20amps to hold 15mph (36v pack) that can't be right at all. The only other Hall/phase combination used a huge amount of amps and sounded like a dog growling but had no power. No joy with the Kelly controller either as it kept cutting out.

Could it be that these new Mac motors have to be ran on a certain type of controller? The other Bike with this motor in is so quiet and really fly's but that was with the controller that cell man sent...confusing eh?
 
HM.
Sorry if i'm repeating myself, but i noticed that cell_man programmed mine with a bit more than 2.5x phase VS battery current.
30 amps battery, 80amps phase. So 5 amps over what is normal.

Yeah, 20 amps to hold 15mph steady is not normal. Not on a flat. On my fat tires, i'll be using about 15 amps on a flat to hold 25mph.. given no wind..
 
neptronix said:
HM.
Sorry if i'm repeating myself, but i noticed that cell_man programmed mine with a bit more than 2.5x phase VS battery current.
30 amps battery, 80amps phase. So 5 amps over what is normal.

Yeah, 20 amps to hold 15mph steady is not normal. Not on a flat. On my fat tires, i'll be using about 15 amps on a flat to hold 25mph.. given no wind..

I think Neptronix was right on the spot.

If you can program the controller try to keep the phase current close to 3x the main current. If that doesnt work, maybe the controller is using el cheapo mosfets and programing cant save it.
 
Its a decent controller, but I don't think it's programmable easy enough.... would have to open it up. How would putting in 3 x main current help with efficiency?


C3625-NC.jpg
 
I dont know why but its a common fact about BMC-MAC motors
I tough his controller was programable...
cell_man should be able to properly explain why
 
That's an infineon, so it's programmable.

I don't fully understand the phase VS battery issue, but from what i know it has to do with stall detection and low winding resistance butting their heads up against each other.

You give it more phase amps and it has more leeway to deal with.

By the way, these motors draw a lot more power than the controller is programmed to give. A 6fet is inadequate IMHO.
For example, mine will draw a peak 43 amps... when it's set to 30amps battery...

So i'd say set yours to 20 amps batt / 55amps phase ( just 5 more than 2.5x ) And see how that works. I bet your peak amps will be around 27a.
 
Cheers for advice, just opened up the little controller and it has the usual transmit, 5v, ground etc .... so I will attempt to hook up my Lyen programming cable.

Peak amps don't bother me it's more about not sounding like something is caught in the wheel and being able to get 2 miles to the Amp hour when doing 15mph. Wish me luck with this programming thing.......
 
Peak amps should be a concern, 27 amps is the limit of the little 6FET and it may be attempting to pull 30amps on hills / starts.

Good luck to you. Let me know how it goes.
 
Peak amps should be a concern, 27 amps is the limit of the little 6FET and it may be attempting to pull 30amps on hills / starts.

Lyen's 6fet controllers can handle a bit more than that mine is set to 25/60 and pulls high 30's for short bursts (i run both 12 & 18s lipo). I can tell you from experience that 33/80 was too much :oops:

the problem ur having with the motor / controller combo sounds familiar. i had a situation where one of my controller/motor combo only liked each other upto 1/2 throttle but anything after that was serious noise & growling. tried every phase/hall combo and found 2 out of 36 that worked but both only upto 1/2 throttle. soon as i hooked up a different controller it worked fine. never did figure it out just know that motor/controller combo is no good. btw, motor is a bafang (i beleive) runs perfectly with both lyens 6fet & ebikekit 9fet (709 board) while the controller (which works perfectly w/ orig motor) that it didn't like was from ebikekit preproduction run they sold last year - 20A controller that has 1 main plug for brakes, power & speed buttons, throttle.

Hope you resolve your problem.

Newb
 
Spacey said:
Sure but how about if I limit the 25 amp controller to 20 amp battery and 65amp phase?

Way too much.
Try what i said and ramp it upwards if you have problems.
The problem with having more phase amps than you need, is that you will draw a bigger jolt of torque when you first hit the throttle. Not necessary.
 
newb, i never heard of the bafang having the same issues. Freaking geared motors ... !!

That being said, i have problems at partial throttle levels.. never at full throttle.
 
neptronix do happen to test the BT set to 0 already?

Now I have 6,9,12,18 fet lyens at hand but no working motor as cell_man vanished...
im almost ordering the BMC V2T for 300 bucks.
life is sad -.-



btw sorry for the thread hijack
 
Thread is as good as dead as I just can not get the infineon 6 fet to program, hooked up all the correct wires from Lyens cable that works just fine on his controllers.

I can not see though how boosting the amount of phase amps would make it use less power though?

Oh well.... fed up of stuff not doing what it should.

edit:

Neptronix where did you get your infineon controller from?
 
Spacey said:
Thread is as good as dead as I just can not get the infineon 6 fet to program, hooked up all the correct wires from Lyens cable that works just fine on his controllers.

I can not see though how boosting the amount of phase amps would make it use less power though?

Oh well.... fed up of stuff not doing what it should.

Dont feel like that Spacey...

Do you think I have a Lyens controller collection and not working motor because I planned this way. things went wrong, as usual.
At least I have alot of spares now. But im hating to use public transportation hehe

He got from lyens if im not mistaken. The price is right and you can have any mods done to the controller for you, plus support from Edward when you need. Btw go for the 9 fet.. runs much cooler.
 
This bike is for a customer, it seems I have hit my credit card limit and losing money fast on these builds.

This week I have had:

5 x 5.8ah 8 cell Lipo ordered from Hobby King 3 of the packs came with dud cells in them

Another 36v 5amp KP charger decides to kill itself

Another evassemble bms on an old build go bang and not excepting a charge

and now I can't get this damn 36v motor to run on the ebikes.ca controller grrr just had another go on it, it does sound rough and grindy where as the 48v bike with Cell Mans controller runs fine and smooth. Have to go to bed as have a big day at work and it is 00:20hrs in uk now...night all....
 
I got my controller from cell_man as part of the MAC motor package.
No problems thus far other than the nags i have listed in my build thread, which honestly aren't major ones.

What happens when you try to program?
 
^--- i know the feeling. Sleep on it. You have hit your frustration limiter :|
 
This is a known issue with the BMC motors. The only good solution is to use the controller that is specifically designed for it. It has to do with the timing of the hall sensors. The MAC/BMC motors use a hall timing that is advanced, not neutral. Most controllers are looking for neutral timing.

A sensorless controller would work, since it doesn't depend on the hall timing.

If you search posts from mrbill, you can see some experiments with changing the hall position to change the timing. Interesting, but changing the hall position is a lot of work.
 
I have never gotten a sensorless xie chang (infineon) to work with the mac style motor. They surge and jitter under more load than about 10 amps.

I have also had an issue with sensorless controllers with bafang motors lately, like there is some change to them that doesn't like any geared motor. Never had the issue before.
 
johnrobholmes said:
I have never gotten a sensorless xie chang (infineon) to work with the mac style motor. They surge and jitter under more load than about 10 amps.

I have also had an issue with sensorless controllers with bafang motors lately, like there is some change to them that doesn't like any geared motor. Never had the issue before.

9 fet lyens was able to run my MAC torque perfectly using abit over 2.5x phase.
 
johnrobholmes said:
Maybe I just need to tweak the phase amps more then. That would be a nice fix.

give it a try... is very easy to program if your controller comes with a proper serial conector like Lyens usually do.
 
If you tweak the phase amps it might help, but keep an eye on the total current drain. That's your real clue when you have it set up right. The no-load/full speed current (measure with wheel off the ground) will be excessively high when the timing is not right.

Do those controllers have any kind of timing advance adjustment? That spiffy timing controller add on gizmo might be a good way to get them dialed in too.

I agree that most sensorless controllers suck. In theory, they could be great, but nobody seems to really have it down. The Castle Creations RC controllers seem about as good as they get, but still can run into issues. I think it is possible to do a decent sensorless control, but it really needs to be designed around the kinds of loads you see on a bike, not an airplane. Maybe someday....
 
With proper amp limiting I think the Castle controllers would work a treat. It is quite hard to get them to skip a beat. I just need to wave a few more $$ their way to try and get the code made. A 100a unit set back to 35a battery and 130a phase shouldn't run into spike issues with as high of frequency as they can be switched and limited.

Is there any way to adjust the timing of the sensorless xie chang controllers without burties tool?
 
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