3DHS New Products and General Plane Info/Help for Fanatics

[gyro]

I think the price of ZTW ESC's is worth soldering on longer leads and bigger capacitators

Before we all jump on this inadequate capacitor boat without a captain, maybe we should confirm that from the vendors? FWIW, I always add longer batter leads onto ALL of my ESCs, (and ALL but a couple are ZTW) and have NEVER had an issue.

-G

 

[ryan_m]

I have also extended leads on several ZTW's (70 amp models) by about 3" with no problems at all.

 

[SteveT.]

Guys....When I asked the question about the capacitors, I did NOT say that ZTW ESCs don't have large enough capacitors.... I only asked if that was a possibility...

SteveT

 

[robj]

Before we all jump on this inadequate capacitor boat without a captain, maybe we should confirm that from the vendors? FWIW, I always add longer batter leads onto ALL of my ESCs, (and ALL but a couple are ZTW) and have NEVER had an issue.

-G

There was an article in MA a while back, said if you need to lenthen ESC wires, do the motor wires, not the battery. Just saying. I think I have lenghtened both from time to time.

 

[TMO]

Hi guys,
Sorry I missed this thread until now. I'm in one of the areas that the Sandy messed up and the power and internet have been down. Gary gave me a heads up about it, but I'm just getting to it now.

About battery and motor wires. Given the general placement of the esc in fairly close proximity to the motor, and the fact the motor also has a few inches of leads, I rarely get complaints about the motor leads. Motor leads can be extended without any problems anyway.

I have from time to time gotten complaints that the battery leads are too short. I went to Jason years ago (the ZTW guy) asking to have mine longer and he told me that the ZTW engineers were adamant that the distance between the battery and the ESC's capacitors must be no longer than 300mm (12") or so. Most battery leads are about 100-125mm, so the ZTW guys throught they could stay within a margin of safety by making their ESC leads 100mm. I later found out on rcgroups in a big thread (called "long battery leads kill esc's") about the science of why: ripple voltage, voltage spikes, inrush current etc. In cases where long battery leads are a must (like on twins or when using a big 12S harness), many advocate installing supplemental capacitors like the Castle CapPack, or just roll your own with the appropriately sized Caps.

But, from ZTW to you guys: 12 inches from the Lipo pack to the Caps is max spec for wire distance without extra methods to protect the Caps. It really is no bearing on the caps' quality- it's just the science of producing AC current from a DC source. Think of the plumbing in your house. When you turn off a downstairs tap real fast, all the water in the pipe suddenly stops and the mass cases the pipes to bang against the joist. The ESC is switching the current from full off to full on at a kHz rate all the time! If you put alot of "water" in that pipe, it will eventually blow out a valve.

 

[SteveT.]

When I made my comment about the caps, I was not commenting on the quality, but rather the size/capacity....as larger caps can "and do" effect how long the wires can be. A case in point.....This ESC can have fairly long wires (up to about 18" I have been told), without adding any caps to the circuit, as it already has large caps. Of course the ESC itself is very large...

SteveT

 

[Joe's Dad]

Hi guys,
Sorry I missed this thread until now. I'm in one of the areas that the Sandy messed up and the power and internet have been down. Gary gave me a heads up about it, but I'm just getting to it now.

About battery and motor wires. Given the general placement of the esc in fairly close proximity to the motor, and the fact the motor also has a few inches of leads, I rarely get complaints about the motor leads. Motor leads can be extended without any problems anyway.

I have from time to time gotten complaints that the battery leads are too short. I went to Jason years ago (the ZTW guy) asking to have mine longer and he told me that the ZTW engineers were adamant that the distance between the battery and the ESC's capacitors must be no longer than 300mm (12") or so. Most battery leads are about 100-125mm, so the ZTW guys throught they could stay within a margin of safety by making their ESC leads 100mm. I later found out on rcgroups in a big thread (called "long battery leads kill esc's") about the science of why: ripple voltage, voltage spikes, inrush current etc. In cases where long battery leads are a must (like on twins or when using a big 12S harness), many advocate installing supplemental capacitors like the Castle CapPack, or just roll your own with the appropriately sized Caps.

But, from ZTW to you guys: 12 inches from the Lipo pack to the Caps is max spec for wire distance without extra methods to protect the Caps. It really is no bearing on the caps' quality- it's just the science of producing AC current from a DC source. Think of the plumbing in your house. When you turn off a downstairs tap real fast, all the water in the pipe suddenly stops and the mass cases the pipes to bang against the joist. The ESC is switching the current from full off to full on at a kHz rate all the time! If you put alot of "water" in that pipe, it will eventually blow out a valve.

Nice explanation. I'll add, longer wires might not destroy the ESC the first time you plug em in. But will degrade the Caps over time which just makes the problem worst. FYI we add caps when adding wire.

 

[ryan_m]

So 12" is the design number the ZTW engineers say not to exceed.
The current leads are what 3"? Even 1 more inch would make them so much easier to deal with... I can see staying well under the 12" mark, but these are so short that they are hard to use. Otherwise I love the ZTW series of ESC's. Especially the new B and land power series ones.

 

[Joe's Dad]

So 12" is the design number the ZTW engineers say not to exceed.
The current leads are what 3"? Even 1 more inch would make them so much easier to deal with... I can see staying well under the 12" mark, but these are so short that they are hard to use. Otherwise I love the ZTW series of ESC's. Especially the new B and land power series ones.

12" total, ESC wire length + Lipo Battery wire length.

 

[gyro]

Posted by Ben yesterday on RCG:

Guys,

A few pieces of news:

We're beginning test flying of a new 50-60CC Scott Stoops aircraft this week. Since we typically do a really poor job of keeping secrets, you'll probably get a spy pic or two before much longer.

If you follow AJ on facebook, you can get updates about his work on the 2M Osiris. A 2M plane takes a very long time to get exactly right, so as usual no definite info on other than AJ is working and flying and will cook up something wonderful for the world.

We're in the process of lining up events for next season. We plan to make announcements about that around Thanksgiving or so.

We're also making it official that Arron Bates and Joe Smith are doing aircraft design work for us. Arron has been doing all sorts of technical stuff for 3DHS for a long time, but I think we have finally convinced him to take on a complete airframe project. We'll see. Joe you all know, and he'll be developing an airframe as well. As you know, these projects are very involved and take a long time, so we'll just say these planes are "forthcoming" and not give any schedule.

Thanks as usual to everyone, for the continued support of 3DHS, hope everyone affected by the storm is getting somewhat back to normal. The warehouse got lots of rain and some scary-looking swollen streams and rivers, but was spared the bad stuff. Some customers in NJ sent some pretty extreme looking photos, so hopefully everything is going better for them.