Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[electricstorm]

You're an extraordinary human being and I applaud you for your unselfish efforts! You have touched uncountless lives with you genorosity. Thanks for keeping this an open source project!! Keep up the good work.

Jim B.

[MPaulHolmes]

Originally Posted by LouMan

and who knows if you get a offer you
can't refuse we still got Adam's controller in the works LOL

Louie...........

hahaha. Louie, you are hilarious!

The gcode is almost done for the new metals for both of the controllers. There's very little drilling. I just have to be really careful. I'm excited to try out the water cooling for the AC. There is like 40 square inches of copper plate pressed against the cold plate, so the heat transfer should be good.

[isaac_alaska]

speaking of cooling, i machined my first heat sink today!

it fits underneath an SOT-227B package, and i fly-cut the mating surface. i'll post a picture of it as soon as my phone isn't 2% away from a dead battery.

[MPaulHolmes]

Shut up! I'm figuring out the gcode right now for the liquid cooled plate for the AC controller. Right now! Hey! The motor got here too. But I haven't gotten it running yet. Stupid friggen classes.

[Alcibiades Ramos]

It is worth mentioning more than once. Paul reminds me of Tesla. I totally agree with you.

"You're an extraordinary human being and I applaud you for your unselfish efforts! You have touched uncountless lives with you genorosity. Thanks for keeping this an open source project!! Keep up the good work. "

Jim B.

[MPaulHolmes]

The only thing I have in common with Tesla is that I'll die as broke as him. haha. The AC control board and driver board stuff came today!

[pamcmills]

I just have to say thanks to Paul also. And thanks to his wife Sabrina for her support in his efforts. My S-10 project would still dead in the water if not for the effort Paul has put into this open source project. Thanks Paul for the boards and parts you have provided at such a reasonable cost. I have 10000 miles on electric power now. 300 miles at 192 volts before the mosfets gave up. I did up the voltage to 168 volts about 2000 miles ago. So far so good. This morning I pulled out the transmission and adapter to start my conversion to an automatic transmission. It'll be a few weeks before it is done. Could use some suggestions on an idle function for the controller. Thanks.

[MPaulHolmes]

I got the bus bars cut up for the prototype, and now I have to drill them, and make that stupid aluminum fixture for the new TO-264 diodes that I'm going to try. They are rated for 400v 120amp each, so I hope 12 will cut it (the cheese).

[electricstorm]

This is to Ben,

Didn't you use a forklift motor for your conversion? If so, what were the specs on it? How much over the rated voltage are you running it?

If it wasn't you, do you know who it was? I can't remember! Danged old age setting in.... LOL

[bennelson]

Yep, lots of people have repurposed electric forklift motors into use as Electric Vehicle motors, including me.

I can't give you any specs on the motor, as there WASN'T an identification plate on it. I can tell you that it was from a full-size Nissan brand forklift, running at 48V. The motor is 10.5" diameter and weighs around 100 lbs.

A while back, motor guru Jim Husted started a thread on another forum about using a forklift motor and choosing a good one. It's kind of a long thread, but if you pick through it, there's lots of good information in it.

What am I saying!?!? No web forum thread is long compared to this one!

As to overvolting, I've mostly run my car at 72V, have experimentally run it at 144V, and it is at 108V right now. Never had any problems, but I could tell it did make a little heat at 144V. Probably should advance the timing if I were going to leave it at that voltage.

I've blown up several controllers, or at least the same controller several times, but never had any trouble with the motor.