ESC cooling

[Peter A]

Hobby king has their branded version of the flycolor 150. Doesn't come with cap bank or plugs. Looks to be in stock in the US store, but not Global or Aussie.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-...html?wrh_pdp=6

[T.S.Davis]

I didn't think to look for the Turnigy version of the Seaking.

[plinse]

Those Flycolor are never quite right again after they thermal one time. After that they shut down, I think, too early. The interesting thing to me on those is how little the water is actually doing. The water passes through those two outside edge tubes. The cooling effect gets nowhere close to where the actual heat is concentrated.

To make a FC150 shut down you really have to push them hard. You have to push them hard and over the rating.
In my GTone I run a 4092 1520kV on 6s and a Prather 220, this setup does 90km/h or 56mph. This setup operates at currents of 200A peak and 130A at top speed and the boat can corner at top speed which pushes the current in the region of 180-200A again.

The hottest part in the boat is the 5000mAh 60C LiPo, the FC150 does not really get hot and also the cooling on the motor works well. No problem there as well.

In some abuse-tests, you could call them SAW ;-) I pushed modified FlyColor to 370A Peak and 200A @ top speed - no problem.

I really wonder how you make them overheat.

On the other hand I agree that the cooling can be optimized.
I removed the original heatsink and glued rectangular brass tube to the copper parts below the heat sink.
As mentioned the modified ESCs never shut down.

If I want to push them really hard there are 2 modifications: Cooling (to feel better about ist ;-) ) and capacitors.
If I want to run them in an "all day setup", I just add capacitors but don't touch the housing.

The copper sheets below the heat sink are electrically connected to the phases. Using them for heat transfer should be quite effective.
If you modify the cooling make sure not to short circuit the copper parts.

Is the Flycolor 150 your referencing the same form factor as the OSE 150?

They pretty much look the same, just additional capacitors are already added with the usual problem. The connection wires are too thin. Better then no upgrade but it could be more effective.

This is one of my modified ones. The target was technical function, not beauty:

By the way this ESC even survived flooding. There was still enough silicone in the critical regions

The stumpfab version looks sweet but this costs maybe $6 total.[
ATTACH=CONFIG]170440[/ATTACH]

That looks pretty much the same. Your experience surprises me. Maybe the root cause is a prior damage as you mentioned that once they have shut down they are not like new any more?

I always run new ones on an EDF plane as a load for 2 complete LiPo to see they work ok and then do my modifications. They never saw overload before and they work great afterwards.

Your experience looks like the over temperature protection just protects the boat from a burning ESC but not the ESC from "slight damage and performance-loss"?

[T.S.Davis]

I really wonder how you make them overheat.

Me too. My question is why they go into thermal protection at 121 degrees. The last one I ran was new as far as I know.

[plinse]

Well you have measured the 121?F on the heatsink I assume...

The Flycolor 150 use the Toshiba TPH1R403NL, 6 of them in parallel which means they have 36 of these SMD FETs on board.
Such a SMD FET weighs nearly nothing, I would guess about half a gram, the data sheet even says it is just 0,069gr.
I assume there is one zero too much in that number ;-)

0,69gr * 36 would give ~25gr of FET which includes silicon, copper and molding. Maximum half of that is silicon where the heat is produced and which needs cooling.

The heatsink has 54gr aluminium and brass.

Just imagine how hot the semiconductor has to be in the end of the run to heat up all that aluminum to 121?F after the water flow breaks down when the boat stops running.

The cooling actually works in stock version. Just pick up your boat a short while after the run when the outside of the ESC has reached maximum heat and pump a little water through the cooling system. On my GTone I can place a syringe with water on the outlet of the cooling system as a funnel and just have the water run through the cooling system in inverse direction. The water runs by itself, no pressure, just gravity. The FlyColor 150 is cooled down after just one load of water (100ml) has gone through while the motor immediately heats up again on the outside when the water comes to a stop.

The watercooling itself works on the ESC, just the thermal path is much too indirect. This is why I removed the gap pad and glued the brass pipes to the internal of the copper directly with very little thermal glue as the layer covers 100% of the copper surface but has nearly no thickness. This is much more direct but also electrically conductive.

The cooling plates offering more surface to the water and smaller size perhaps look better but I don't think they have a lot of benefit. They still need the gap pad for electrical insulation as you don't want to short circuit the 3 phases...
Actually they are what people obviously want and they look nice but I don't think they help.

The three self made brass coolers don't need electrical insulation. This is their main benefit.

[ray schrauwen]

Thank you!

[T.S.Davis]

Mine had no case. Removed all that and attached cooling tubes right to the output bus bars.

We went to Castles on everything.

[eric113]

Mine had no case. Removed all that and attached cooling tubes right to the output bus bars.

We went to Castles on everything.

I’m getting to that point with esc’s. Start switching to Castle.

[Peter A]

What about the ZTW 200. So far they have worked out not bad even though my first one (V1) burned up when the motor seized due to a loose carbon wrap thread on the rotor got caught. I have a V2 in that boat (q sport hydro, TP 4060 1570 kv) now and it performs ok, I think better than the SK180 I have in my Q rigger with a SSS 4092 1400kv. Thw ZTW runs cooler than the SK. The ZTW is a bigger unit but. I find those big extra caps on the SK get pretty hot.

[plinse]

Well this is a current profile which I run on a Setup using 6s 5000 Turnigy Heavy Duty with a 4092 1520 kV motor using a Flycolor 150A with some aditional capacitors (8000?F additional, consisting of 8x Rubicon 1000?F 25V):

I don't have to interrupt the run, it can last maximum 2 1/2 min anyway as the LiPo is discharged by then and I don't have any issues with the FC150.
Ok, there are really some additional Caps added, not just fiddling around with a few ones and no thin wire as you can skip the added caps anyway if you don't connect them properly. On the other hand this is my simple modification just adding caps. The ESC still runs using the original heat sink.

To me this is a solid 150A ESC doing a good job.

[ray schrauwen]

Ray, here how I set mine up.

Thank you. late but hey...

[Jonathan DeMaria]

Why did you have to find a new pad,What was wrong with the 1 that came with?

[Alfa Spirit]

The ZTW SEAL ESCs are very well made, and they are affordable .

Reliability is excellent.

[ray schrauwen]

Why did you have to find a new pad,What was wrong with the 1 that came with?

The pad fell apart when I took it apart and the bus bars below I was told in here were live and would short out if there was no thermal pad of some sort in between.

[ray schrauwen]

Well. All for naught.

Ran it Saturday. Thermalled on the cool down lap. The 150 slows down instead of stopping like some do. Checked the temp. 121 degrees. Next run the power cut out happened on the 4th lap with less prop. Toss that one in the dumpster.

Were you using it on a Limited class boat?