I am attempting to build a tennis ball serving machine using 3 x 36v brushless dc motors (No Hall) belt driven onto 20cm diameter scooter wheels, powered by 4 x 3ah 18 v makita power tool batteries (paired) to make a 36v 6 ah system. 2 of the 3 (very cheap) motor controllers blew up when I tried to power up the motors and the 3rd is not exactly smooth on startup… (noisy and glitchy before it gets going…) Spinning the wheels currently pulls 4.8 amps per wheel at top speed but startup is more … I am looking for a relatively cheap (around £50 or less) per controller esc with potentiometer (so I can control the individual rpm of each wheel) solution for this build. Can anyone point me in the right direction of a good solution please? Many thanks! Matthew.
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I can’t name a specific controller, but rc-helicopter esc’s usually have a ‘governor-mode’ that controls rpm. They also offer extremely slow startup, so the system wouldn’t be overstressed.
But you’d need external servo-testers (as potmeters) for it or an rc-transmitter/receiver.
I’d search for the cause of the esc-failure before burning up the next batch.
Are the motors linked together by the belt or wheels? I guess one motor started first and pulled the other motors around, before they got sync’ed by their controller.
Freewheels between each motor would prevent that.
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Thanks for the tips!
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