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Author Topic: Problems with some Edge ESCs  (Read 5135 times)

Offline Will Hubin

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Problems with some Edge ESCs
« on: May 11, 2015, 08:43:47 PM »
Three FM-9 users, one in California, one in Australia, and one in Germany have reported on a very strange and disturbing problem with one Castle Creations Edge Lite 50 ESC. Each has had one that worked properly and one that did not.

The symptom is that, after the motor blip, there is a screeching sound as the timing of the PWM pulses to the motor aren't properly synchronized.  Sometimes the motor greatly over revs. Usually it settles down, finally, at the programmed RPM.

The Australian user send me the problem ESC and I was able to reproduce the problem on my test stand. Extremely unnerving and unpleasant!

I sent an email to Castle's user support email address and received a reply from Clint Akins, Outside Sales and Support. Even though he was on the way to the Joe Nall Fly-In, we arranged to discuss the problem over the phone. I hooked up Castle Link and we went through the settings. Without changing them, he had me use the "Update" button to send the same settings to the ESC. To my amazement, that cured the  ESC, as I verified with a bunch of different programmed RPMs.

Clint says that he first heard of a similar problem at a helicopter meet and this is where he found how to correct the problem. He feels that the answer is that the ESC sometimes reads the information from Castle Link incorrectly (even though it implements an error-detection scheme, but presumably one that doesn't catch all bit errors). (I have never heard of the problem occurring on the Phoenix or the ICE or the Talon.)

I'm impressed that Clint took the time to help address this problem in a timely fashion.

I would appreciate it if anyone else who has experienced this problem and who tries, hopefully successfully, to cure it will comment on it here.

Offline Tim Wescott

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Re: Problems with some Edge ESCs
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2015, 11:44:54 PM »
If Castle cares about quality products, somewhere in the world there's at least one very stressed-out software engineer...
AMA 64232

The problem with electric is that once you get the smoke generator and sound system installed, the plane is too heavy.

Offline Motorman

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Re: Problems with some Edge ESCs
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2015, 10:12:02 PM »
Will make that 4. I also run your FM-9 timer. I have no problems with the Ice Lite 50 but the Edge Lite 50 is different. The rpm I program into the timer is lower than the rpm I get at the prop. I had to increase the setting about 1500 rpm to get what I wanted. Also, there is weirdness at the initial bump. sometime the prop just shakes and buzzes or it can turn backwards in a slow weird way sometimes it works ok but it always takes off and runs ok so I didn't think much of it. Dang I bought 2 of those things on sale real cheap. Hope the fix works for me.

MM

Online Dennis Toth

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Re: Problems with some Edge ESCs
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2016, 05:47:07 PM »
MM,
One thing I have found with any of the Castle Creation ESC's you should go through the settings using Castle Link. You want the ESC to have correct motor data (i.e. number of poles, Kv, PWM, timing etc.), battery info, cutoff amp sensitivity and throttle setting. Also, the timer needs to by set to control the way you want it, matched to the settings in the ESC. I had a situation where the timer wasn't set to 100% throttle and I wanted the ESC to control the rpm in fix rpm. This resulted in the rpm being limited even though I kept moving up the rpm in the ESC. Once I got that corrected I got all the rpm I wanted.

Best,      DennisT


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