Castyle Hydra Ice 240 failure

[racerr73]

Hi,
Just wondering if anyone has had a failure of the small square circuit board that plugs into the main board. I replaced all the caps with new rubycon zlh 35v 1000's and 680's and made sure to use thermal silicone mat between the 2 green metal pieces that contact the sides of the board. After plug in and 1 rev of the motor the smoke started from the esc. Any idea why all of a sudden something failed in the small square circuit board? Is this a common issue? I am using a 1 ohm 1 watt resistor as recommended by castle to use when using extra cap packs on battery plug in.
This was the 2nd hydra ice 240 i have put new caps on exactly the same as this one and it is working fine.


Looks like i will replace this with a hydra x8s, since we race with 1p regulations and pull between 160-180 amps for our 5 lap races will a extra cap pack be needed? Anything i should look out for when using a hydra x8s, anything you have to keep an eye on?

Thanks
Trev

[TRUCKPULL]

That is the radio board.

They don't like water at all.

I have had some luck with replacing them with other Castle boards.

Larry J.

[RaceMechaniX]

Trev,
It looks like you just lost one bank of FET's on the positive side. The control board was just the canvas for the smoke and burnt copper to spray onto. You can likely clean off the smoke with some alcohol and a toothbrush. I do recommend conformal coating these boards too.

Did you manage to pull any data? you should be able to just hook the control board up the PC without the power board attached.

[ray schrauwen]

I Was just going to post my XL2 converted esc for sale. I did coat that board on mine. Great esc just no use for it.

[ray schrauwen]

Trev,
It looks like you just lost one bank of FET's on the positive side. The control board was just the canvas for the smoke and burnt copper to spray onto. You can likely clean off the smoke with some alcohol and a toothbrush. I do recommend conformal coating these boards too.

Did you manage to pull any data? you should be able to just hook the control board up the PC without the power board attached.

What voltage are those fets good up to?

[racerr73]

Hi Tyler,
Thanks for your replies, greatly appreciated. I have recovered the data from the small board and have attached it below. This data was a stored 6s pack revving up a 1530/1.5d neu 1355kv motor with no shaft attached after updated cp fitment basically to test esc and make sure motor direction was correct.
Are the fets that are damaged replaceable, is the esc a throw away?
Thanks
Trev

[RaceMechaniX]

Trev, I say your IM, but will reply here as well. Something was wrong with the ESC or the motor from the data. Although a 1530 1.5D is a very stout motor and can pull a lot of current, it should not be pulling 100A with no load. That may just but a spike in the data, but look at how quickly the temperature rose going from 100F to 186F in the last several seconds. That was the indicator that the FET's were already damaged. Have you run this setup before? If yes, can you post datalogs? I can only assume it was pulling pretty high currents.

The stock Castle cooling arrangement is not very robust, that is to say the thermal conduction is not great to the heatsink. Because the heat sink is a singular piece of conductive aluminum (normally anodizing electrically insulates, but cannot be 100%) Castle needs to use a thermal transfer tape at least on one row to electrically insulate the bus bars. The bus bars that run on the sides are the heat sink, but must be electrically isolated. Several of us have removed the stock heat sink and soldered on tubes directly on the bus bars which results in much better cooling.

I suspect your failure was related to a hot section of the FET's and high current.

The FETs are replaceable, however you need solder tweezers to do this work and its rather difficult for the average Joe without the right equipment and experience. I would put in a drawer and look to replace it. Assuming you can fit a XLX2 or X8S in your boat that would be a much better option. The XLX2 is more appropriate for the 1530 Neu on 6S if you want headroom, but a X8S will handle 180-200A all day long if that's what you previous data shows.

[racerr73]

Tyler,
Thank you for your reply. I have attached the normal set up data log graph i used at the Australian Nationals in June last year. 6s1p Neu 1530/1.5d, Prather 255 prop, ML Boatworks gp400 hull.
Thanks
Trev

[RaceMechaniX]

Trev, I see a lot of throttling going on in that run and that is hard on those particular ESC's. The newer X8S and XLX2 are much better at partial throttle. Based on your data the X8S would cover it.

[racerr73]

Tyler,
Thank you for looking over that data, look forward to seeing how the hydra x8s goes in the boat.

Thanks
Trev