Cheapest Brushless ESC Test and Review

[NomadRacer]

I'm with Matt on number #5. I'll not take the chance on getting a bum ESC and/or considering it "disposal".

[Basher67]

Not sure how the experience would be in the case of a faulty unit. My experience with most of these sellers has been pretty positive. Usually they just send you a new unit and request the old faulty one be returned only about 50% of the time. With a 3-4 day turn around from a U.S. seller, this is not a deal breaker for me at all. I'm not looking for a replacement for my race esc's. I'm looking for a cost effective way to install a good performing sensored brushless system in any of my runners for just a few dollars.

[Dadio]

I've got one of these myself and it worked well for a couple of months then it started cutting out , I later found that the fan had failed so it could have been over heating , it was fitted to a RE RE Scorpion with a 10.5t motor , probably over geared slightly as it popped wheelies on grass before it failed .

[Basher67]

I killed it! I wired it into my slash 4x4 with my new 6.5t motor, recalibrated it to the traxxas radio, and everything looked good. I did some super slow, barely any throttle circles in my living room to verify all was ready to go. I picked it up and did a couple full throttle blips and watched the tires violently balloon up, which always makes me grin a little at the anticipation of shredding some tread off the tires at high speeds, and about the fourth time i hit the throttle, i got nothing but a faint wiff of something in my nose that I can only describe as the smell of caps popped in a cap gun. No smoke, nothing had a chance to heat up. The leds on the side of the esc were still lighting up in reaction to my transmitter input. Then the motor glitched for a second like it suddenly got a little power, then nothing. I removed the 6.5t motor and soldered back on my 17.5t and got nothing. I thought maybe it was a low voltage cutout since I grabbed a battery set at storage voltage and didn't charge it before plugging it in. After charging, I plugged it in and tried to recalibrate it just to be sure. This time the calibration sequence made no noise like it should. I gave it some throttle and the motor ran at low speed for a couple seconds and then nothing again. I knew the 6.5t motor was way too much for it despite their amperage capacity claims, but I was disappointed that it just fried almost instantly. I was hoping to heat it up and check the overheat protection to see if it worked properly. I'm going to order another one and stick it back in my stampede with the 17.5 motor and see how long it lasts like that.

[jwscab]

One bank of your Fets has gone south. You could in theory buy new Fets and replace them. I've done this with an associted esc recently.

They go out without much fanfare if you try and pull too much current.

[Basher67]

My knowledge of electrical ccomponents is zilch, but these little black squares on both sides of this little board have a couple issues. As you can see in the pics, 2 on one side look like holes have burned through them and the front center one on the other side is burned through. Maybe someone who has knowledge of this stuff can chime in. Does this board look similar or inferior to other esc's. Don't most esc's have overload protection or does this sort of thing just happen to the cheapo esc's?

[jwscab]

Those are the Fets. And blown up. If you can read the good ones, post up any info you can read.

Generally there are three banks of Fets, one for each pole of the motor. Each bank should have two sets of mirrored Fets that make the h bridge. It's hard to see how they are wired but it looks pretty standard. The extra buss wire is pretty cool.

[Basher67]

Here's a close-up shot of one of them

[jwscab]

6414a is a 30 amp 30v fet.

[Basher67]

Does that make it a 30 amp esc?

[jwscab]

No I think there are least 2 in parallel. Fets can handle higher currents in pulses also. I suspect that trying to dump 120a continuously would fry just about any esc out there. So labeling on escs is kinda marketing

[Basher67]

They don't advertise a motor turn limit and I don't know if I would believe them anyway. I guess my goal now is to see what motor it can handle long term and not go over that. If it can only handle a 17.5, I'm good with that for the price, but I would like to know it's actual limits to give it a fair test. I have another one on the way. I might order a 13.5t motor and see how that does.

[Dadio]

As mentioned above the amperage rating of an esc is missleading in the extreme although generally relative to other ESC , a full size car starter motor may draw 100 to 200 amps depending on the engine , I can't imagine one of our ESC managing to run a motor to start even a small car engine can you ?

[BooGTS]

Wow, that damage is pretty crazy. I've only been able to run a battery through mine, so time will tell, but so far so good.

[Lonestar]

revisiting this thread as i need to equip a few bashers at low cost

@Dadio, was the program that was installed there offering you some variable timing options (a la Xerun V2) or just simple "more/less" timing setup features (a la original Xerun)? thank you

4 the colour of the wires A,B and C is wrong so be careful to match A to A ,B to B , C to C and not just match the colours of the wires

Tells you a lot about RCgroups users, eh