Sunday, February 14, 2010

Re: [Electric Boats] (A Little) More On Electrical Safety...

 

It is possible to lose the ground on the throttle pot, by a broken wire, or a loose plug, resulting in a wot condition. Most controllers include a "seat switch", designed to kill power in the absence of an operator. Using a ground sourced at the last possible solder terminal to pull down the seat switch is one solution. 

One last comment: I've been designing and testing brushless DC motors and controllers for the last ten years, and never had a controller fail to wot. Plenty of blown boards and melted coils to be sure, but brushless, at least, fails to off.

Be Well,
Arby

On Feb 14, 2010, at 4:58 PM, Matthew Geier <matthew@acfr.usyd.edu.au> wrote:

 

Eric wrote:
> Is this potential problem of runaway controller limited to DC controllers? Should this be a consideration for a system using the open frame Mars motor? It seems like a DC to AC convertor won't fail in a full on condition.
>
You couldn't have the shorted out put applying full power to the motor
like a DC setup, but most of these motor controllers contain reasonably
complex software, and that software could fail in such a way to apply
WOT. The throttle itself could fail in such a way to send 'WOT' to the
controller.... Such a failure would be incredibly rare, but it could happen.

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