a tool to know when your motor will short (it will eventually)

StitchInTime_2020_TEMPLATED.pdf (widen.net)

TOP-5 best insulation testers in 2021 from $40 to $600 | Buyer’s Guide (gadgets-reviews.com)

could save you a streetface and possibly ruining an esc as well

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I personally feel like most of the esk8 motor failures in this regard are caused by microscopic vibrations in the windings and that coating them with varnish or epoxy can drastically help mitigate this. Dipping the whole stator in something would probably work even better if you felt like remachining the bearing seats.

Especially where the windings exit the stator and terminate into phase wires, they often wrap around the stator a little bit and can bounce around or vibrate, I feel like that’s a major short risk in the long-term (not much in the short term) and I personally have been taking steps to mitigate it.

Any movement of the windings IMHO is a really bad thing, and having magnetic pulses coming from the wires causes vibration, so holding them in place I think is pretty important.

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Most places seem to dip their windings. Of the 6 motors I’ve taken apart, 4 had epoxy holding the windings together. The winding glue hummie uses is pricey stuff, but you do want quality motor winding epoxy.

Which six brands? I’ve never seen that in esk8 motors.

Think one really neglected part of esk8 is the yearly maintenance, which should include things like checking on thermal pads in the ESC, openinng up the bell on motors to blow out any dirt and gravel.
Checking bearings, visual inspection where possible, checking p-group voltages, discharge test to determine pack health(maybe not every year but atleast after a few hundred cycles) etc.

Guess maintaining gears goes without hesitation for most people, but theres so much more :smiley:

Personally I just like to rebuild my shit since it usually takes about as much time as maintenence, do some paint work, switch out trucks/wheels for something else. W/e works

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Most stuff in esk8 if rode properly doesn’t last enough for a yearly maintenance. It also seems that the crap motors chinesium companies sell to us are the first thing to go, right before belts, tyres and bearings

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I’ve only ruined one motor in 5 years, so not sure I agree :man_shrugging:

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I’m on the third pair. All technically work, but they click, rattle, resonate, or were never properly balanced in the first place from factory. If i hear new sounds from a car one day i take it to service, the esk8 is no different to me

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Wow, that’s really cool. Had no idea such powerful ohm-meters existed!

I wonder how hard it would be to incorporate a circuit like that into our ESCs :thinking: Would be cool if you could have your smartphone app to operate the motor until it reaches a constant temperature you want to measure at, then you measure, and over time you get a nice graph that can warn you if your motor appears to be close to shorting.

I realize that sounds like a very niche use case, but as the hobby grows and we keep going faster, I think this would be useful to people to stay safe.

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A fun way to do it:

1 Like