Spark Arrestor

[Eggy]

MGM also recommends spark arrestors. What arrestor ETTI recommends?

I dont know more details than that. This was the info i was given by a trusty member of another board who got some contacts within Etti.

[tharmer]

ETTI sends a resistor with its SC.
-t

[Ub Hauled]

ETTI sends a resistor with its SC.
-t

really? I never got it... hmm?!

[DISAR]

Me neither

[sailr]

God help the poor unsuspecting shade tree mechanic if he ever tries to work on a car like that. Can you say ZZZZZAAAP!

are t hose the same that are offered in the consumer market?
I know that they are going to market a car that have giant capacitors
as fuel tanks... pretty cool stuff

[sailr]

With all due respect to Joe, if you call Castle, you will get different answers from everyone you talk to irrespective of the question.

I wish they could all get on the same page.

Joe Ford not only recommended it but he suggested it for the next line of ESCs (according to him).
The person that you spoke about may have been only a sales person (no disrespect to sales people).

[Raydee]

I have a email from Patrick C. at caslte that says while they don't recommned the use of a spark arrestor on their esc's you "can" use a 1 ohm or lower resistor inline to help prolong the life of your bullets. He also said that the spark will in "no way" harm the esc no matter how large it is. He says that a resistor over 1 ohm can in fact harm the components of the esc.
Again I am not going to debate who is right or wrong but I tend to do what the manufacturer says.

[sailr]

I would tend to go with what Patrick says. He's the designer of the esc's and the owner of the company.

I have a email from Patrick C. at caslte that says while they don't recommned the use of a spark arrestor on their esc's you "can" use a 1 ohm or lower resistor inline to help prolong the life of your bullets. He also said that the spark will in "no way" harm the esc no matter how large it is. He says that a resistor over 1 ohm can in fact harm the components of the esc.
Again I am not going to debate who is right or wrong but I tend to do what the manufacturer says.

[egneg]

I did some further testing and my little spark arrestor seems to work fine. Even with a 1p set up. The only time the caps drained after disconnecting the spark arrestor was when the reciever was left on. I don't know if my choice of resister is optimal, but it works.

I did do one last test without the spark arrestor to see how much more spark with the new cap board. I was surprised how large the spark was.

Tom, every time I plug in my ESC, I expect a fire

If anyone want to debate the use of a spark arrestor on this thread, have at it.
I'm all ears!!!!

Mike I have to say that after plugging in 4S lipo's into the Etti with the added caps the first time it scared the bajeebers out of me. So I followed your idea and made an arrester such as you did. I used 220 ohm 1/2 watt resisters in parallel for 1 watt total. From using the spark calculator I found that the lower the resister the faster the charge. At 220 ohms it figured to be a 1 second charge time. Here is a picture of the one I made.

http://scriptasylum.com/rc_speed/_nospark.html

[properchopper]

God help the poor unsuspecting shade tree mechanic if he ever tries to work on a car like that. Can you say ZZZZZAAAP!

He better be wearing a parachute !!

[Cat-Boi]

I did the same thing with my etti 200 and 4s, used their recommended resistor and works great!

[Chilli]

Thats cool Chuck. Hope it works out for you. The caps charge so quickly, you dont even have to plug it in. Just make contact, hold it in place for a few seconds and you are money.

Sandy, What resistor does Etti use/recommend with the 200?

[Cat-Boi]

you know I dont remember, came with the unit.

[detox]

Castles MMM controller comes with a on/off switch that will stop sparking if the switch is turned off before connecting cables, but their switch is a very poor quality switch that must be replaced using a better quality Futaba switch.

Yes I run the MMM air cooled controller in one of my boats.


...

[Gerwin Brommer]

Detox.

So the switch takes over the purpose of the sparkarrestor.
Imagine what happens between the contacts of the switch.........
Exactly the same as between the connectors/spark arrestor.

So you have to change the switch after some time.