Puck battle hardening / Potentiometer shit / Discussion of pros & cons (serious)

[jaykup]

@Shadowfax

I decided to battle harden my second hoyt puck with epoxy as shown in your picture. Worked perfect for about a year, and then the potentiometer started to fail. I never dropped it, it just started being frequently unresponsive / occasionally sending full throttle. Now, I have a totally unrepairable puck, and the entire PCB is trash instead of just sending it to hoyt for repair.

Epoxy turns rubbery with heat. You can probably use a hot air station to soften the epoxy and remove it. Yes the pcb is also made of epoxy but probably higher temp and the copper should wick away the heat enough that the added epoxy should soften first. Worth a try if you have already written it off.

The z-mote guy talked about having potentiometer issues with his prototypes and ended up using one that was rated for like a million cycles. You could check the part number of the Hoyt one and see what it is rated for and try to find a similar one with a longer estimated life

Throttle gave me a bit of a trouble as well. I didn’t want to use hall sensor because they are hard to get it just right and the output values are sometimes jumpy which is not ideal. I turned my attention to potentiometers but again most of the products are rated for 10-20K turn lifecycles. I found 2-3 products which are just right and rated for 1KK(1million) turn lifecycle and they are incredibly steady.

FWIW the hall sensor throttle on vesc wand is terrible and imo unusable.

[Shadowfax]

Unfortunately, when I said epoxy, I meant JB weld. I don’t see any hope of getting the potentiometer off without mass destruction.

[Evwan]

Isn’t that JB weld conductive?

[jaykup]

Are you not Dremel Evan??

Not sure which JB Weld you used, but seems like max temp is 150C so it probably hits the glass transition temperature just above that. Still colder than solder so I think it has a chance of working. I mean what will realistically get damaged? The pot? It’s already coming off…

[Shadowfax]

No, standard JB weld is an insulator.

@jaykup

Not sure which JB Weld you used, but seems like max temp is 150C

JB weld is remarkably heat tolerant. People use it on engine repairs.

I used the standard JB weld (not extra heat or whatever)

This is what I could find:

• Maximum Application Temperature - 120 °F
• Maximum Performance Temperature - 550 °F

I already replaced the puck, but I’ll see what I can do with an old soldering iron tip and a heat gun.

[Evwan]

Ah Im mistaken. I thought the dark grey jbweld was the high tensile one that had steel in it. I guess the colors are meaningless

[jaykup]

Looks like the “kwik” cure stuff is 300F (150C), but the original long cure formula is 550F (287C).

[iNoLikeFlexyDecks]

@jaykup

FWIW the hall sensor throttle on vesc wand is terrible and imo unusable.

Me and my friends here all own the hall sensor Wand and we have never had issues/false signals.

Say all you want but I’m happy I got this instead of the puck…

[DougM]

@walnuts

Someone needs to make a drop in hall sensor for it like @3DServisas did for the VX4

Well that’s a fascinating question. Depending on what’s available on these pads

you could build a drop-in hall replacement.

But I think the issue is that Hoyt would have to be willing to adapt the firmware to the output curve of the HALL. I’m not sure they’d be willing to do that.

[jaykup]

@iNoLikeFlexyDecks

Me and my friends here all own the hall sensor Wand and we have never had issues/false signals.

Say all you want but I’m happy I got this instead of the puck…

Doesn’t engage until 1/4 throttle and backs off at full throttle. Very short throw. Overall poor tuning of the hall sensor throttle.

Did you ever find a fix for this?

@iNoLikeFlexyDecks

When pressing the throttle all the way. You can push the magnets beyond the hall sensors and it actually releases the throttle a little bit.

So if you use some force to press down the throttle when going all in. You will actually not be going full throttle. I know it seems like a stupid thing to say but the magnet version of the wand has already a much smaller resolution so this matters imo.

@jaykup

Same here

[iNoLikeFlexyDecks]

You can replace the silicone pads with bigger ones.

You won’t notice this little indent on your riding though.

[iNoLikeFlexyDecks]

@jaykup

Very short throw

This is fact

[magharees]

Snip & dremel off what you can 1st?

[Shadowfax]

@magharees

Snip & dremel off what you can 1st?

haha I’ll give it a shot when I have this puck in hand again. I’m a few hundred miles away from it right now. I seriously doubt it will be repairable when I get through my dremeling action on it

[walnuts]

@DougM

But I think the issue is that Hoyt would have to be willing to adapt the firmware to the output curve of the HALL. I’m not sure they’d be willing to do that.

@hoytskate thoughts?

[BenjaminF]

Not sure why y’all are assuming that the puck would need a new firmware for a drop-in hall sensor to work. The VX4 doesn’t need new firmware for the 3DS hall sensor to work, does it?

But also, I dont see us developing another new firmware specifically for someone’s 3rd party hall sensor install. We have a very small staff, and we’re extremely busy building boards and doing R&D on our own new products. We are not going to take time away from that to do R&D for someone else’s product.

[tipsy]

@jaykup

FWIW the hall sensor throttle on vesc wand is terrible and imo unusable.

Haven’t found a remote I like more than v2 wand so far.

Bought into the puck hype and absolutely hated it.

[Venom121212]

Dual trigger though

[JesseM]

are new Pucks being sold with the Battle hardened or is that still up to an end user?

Aside from mentioning that this shit is dangerous, there is no mention of the issue or the fix on the website, I was curious as the last one I got new most recently hadn’t despite me knowing it was new stock… was it just new old stock or new new stock?

[PedroMcJimenez]

AFAIK, they don’t “harden” it with epoxy but they lay a better bead of solder than early batches. As well as the shells have been modified from the originals to have better support for the pot.
Not perfect, never will be with the current design, but better than when first released.