Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[MPaulHolmes]

Holy mackerel... YOu should be afraid... You won't be its first victim... or its last.

[flores]

Right.

I've got the 1000A beta box delivered.
Friday i'll pickup my 144V lipo pack and plan on getting it in the beetle together with the 1000A controller this weekend and test it, and share the results with you guys.

Or should I wait hooking up such a high voltage pack until some research on a broken 1000A beta controller is done, Paul?

There were 3 beta's right? I've heard of one breaking.. what happend to the other?

[voltmatic automaton]

For the 3 large red caps, are they going thru the board or just soldered to the surface?

I ask because there are 3 holes left that have nothing soldered to them.

[voltmatic automaton]

what are the 3 holes in the middle for and if they are for soldering which side needs to be done(or both?)

[MPaulHolmes]

Hi Voltmatic! You must have had that power board that I made a slight booboo on. Those 3 holes are nothing. Just ignore them. NOthing to see there... I hope I gave you a discount if that's the board you got. hehe. They don't hurt anything. However, like Oprah, they serve no purpose and have no intrinsic value.

I think I figured out what happened with one of the 1000amp controllers. It had a very unusual failure that I hadn't seen before. There was a hunk of M- and a hunk of B- bus bars that had vaporized right at the same spot. I believe that for whatever reason, an arc was started from B- to M- right at that point. It may have had nothing to do with a mosfet failing. Hmm... Maybe there was a bit of metal inside the controller that bounced around and bridged B- to M- right there and got the arc started. I'm not sure though.

[flores]

Shouldn't there be 4 large red caps? I've got 4 on my 500a..

[MPaulHolmes]

Now, don't tell any of the 500amp people, but you have 10 epcos blue film caps instead of 4 red film caps. I'm not going to say that it's more expensive and fancier... but it is.

[Camaro]

I'm almost embarrassed to show my controller. You guys have made some great looking cases for yours. But here is my modified 500amp controller. No shinny caps or cool logos, but I did add green leds around the inside of the case. They rotate as the throttle increases. Kind of like the warp core of the Enterprise, at least that's the idea.

[MPaulHolmes]

I think it's awesome! YOu can see everything in there! And any connection to the starship enterprise automatically makes it the best controller in the known universe. I'm just going to say it... A Priori, It's also makes it the best in the unknown universe.

[harlequin2]

I'm getting an inferiority complex looking at all these beautiful works of art! Sniff. Here's a picture of my very ugly 625A version of the 500A controller that never gets above 45 deg C. Actually, the motors get hotter than that!