Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[dave koller]

[Ken6881]

Just wanted to say thanks again for all the help and to let everyone know we drove the car totalling around 8 miles today. only one issue was found that caused the biggest headache was a bad switch powering the controller when you hit a bump it would break connection restarting the controller. otherwise we were able to draw 490 amps and only brought the controller up to 69 degrees F

[MPaulHolmes]

HURRAY!!! That answers one question I had!!! I didn't know what would happen if you suddenly turned off the 12v power while driving. I'm glad nothing horrible happened.

[Ken6881]

Im glad i could help you on that under power it will simply reset and if you have the pre-charge feature turned on it waits until its finished then goes right ahead and works great. While driving we had this happen i would say 5 times or there about until i turned the pc time to zero (currently contractor is on a switch) then it would loose power until you let off the gas and pushed it back on and it would pick right back up. only problem we had was trying to set the bat amp limit it would never take 3 digit amp limits. if you typed in 500 you would get 50 or 250 you would get 25 not sure why that was but we were about sick the first time we pulled out and had about a 5mph top speed. set it back to 000 and drove it.

[MPaulHolmes]

Although it worked, and is probably fine, it's still really really scary to me, so please get a new on-off switch. hahaha. You don't want to give this poor old man a heart attack.

[Ken6881]

Will do lets face it a 7 dollar switch is nothing compared to building another controller

[bennelson]

[QUOTE=Ken6881;278393 when you hit a bump it would break connection restarting the controller. [/QUOTE]

I had the same issue with a Curtis controller on a Citicar.

The Citicar has a switch on the parking brake. That switch would loosen up. While driving along, it would cut out, and remove power to the main contactor.

I don't remember the exact wiring on that. It may have turned off the main contactor AND turned off the controller I'm not sure. Anyways, I would have to pull over (while still coasting, and trying to figure out what happened) Then fiddle with the switch, and everything would be fine again.

I never had a problem with the controller because of it though.

I am excited about the "pre-charge AND contactor controll built-in!" features of the new Open ReVolt.

I just have to do some work on the case and mounting it, and my Electro-Metro will be running the 1000 Amp controller! (I still need to find a 1000 amp fuse though!)

Not sure what my 300 amp ammeter is going to think of it either. I guess it won't mind being pegged while I do a burn-out!

[MPaulHolmes]

Hey! I found one! hahaha.

Fuse, Gould A30QS1000-128, 1000 amp, 300 VDC

edit: This one is a little more reasonable:
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/FER...MUT-Fuse-6UVD4

EDIT AGAIN!: This one is even cheaper. 600v AC so good for 300v DC:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GOULD-SHAWMU...-/350502626617

I just thought of another idea... 300 amps on the battery side is a lot for poor lead acid. There's an option in the controller to limit battery amps, which doesn't affect motor amps until the PWM duty gets too high. So you could still do burnouts at 1000 motor amps, but not blow the 300amp fuse, as long as it was on the battery pack B+ or B-.

[steiner]

Paul,

Are you using the mosfets, diodes and capacitors that are called out in the BOM for the 1000 amp Rev 1A in the wiki? I see there is a version 2A but there isn't anything listed for the BOM.

Rev 1A lists Panasonic p/n EET-ED2D102CA for the capacitors, IRFP4668PBF for the fets, and APT60S20B2CTG for the diodes.

I really like the way you soldered the fets and diodes to the buss bar. Nice job!!

Rick

[MPaulHolmes]

No. Pretty much all the 1000 amp stuff on the wiki is worthless. I'm using

25 of
Digi-Key - P11621-ND (Manufacturer - EET-ED2D821BA)

12 of
Digi-Key - IXFX230N20T-ND (Manufacturer - IXFX230N20T)

Which by the way means they can probably do closer to 1500-1600 amps. They are friggen beefcakes which as DJBecker pointed out to me, have a very small thermal resistance from junction to case. And the case to sink thermal resistance is also almost zero since they are soldered to it.

12 of these diodes:
Digi-Key - APT60S20B2CTG-ND (Manufacturer - APT60S20B2CTG)