On our 4th motor controler

Lynxmotion
1

Alright its gettig a bit tiring but we keep having random issues happening with our motor contorlers.

But these last two we just can’t figure out…

We are using the sabertooth 2x5 to power 4 dc motors (lynxmotion.com/Product.aspx? … egoryID=11) which have a stall current of 1.5, so in theory a max of 3A per channel(left side and right side channel)… within the controler’s tollerances.

No we had everything hooked up to specs, motors went into M1A & M1B for channel 1, and M2A & M2B for channel 2. Battery connetions to B+ and B-, and our microcontoler’s ground o 0V and the UART com port Transmit line to S1.

Sure enough we turn it on and it started smoking, we did kill the power and inevitable took the back off the second one (being nosey). Quite clearly a burn mark on one of the ICs and burn marks on the PCB.

What didn’t we do? Why did a motor controler that should have been well within tollerances go up in smoke?

We did use a multimeter to check the voltages, batteries were only at 12V.

Thanks for the help.

2

The guys at Dimension Engineering are very good about replacing their controllers. Without an image of the wiring I doubt anyone could make an accurate assessment as to what caused the problem. Are you saying you burned up 3 other controllers? Sorry but if that’s true you must be wiring them up wrong. I have not seen any other reports like this. It must be something specific to your set up. The fact that it smoked as soon as the power was applied tells me this has nothing to do with the current rating of the motors.

3

We need a picture but I have to ask is the motor controller mounted on or near anything metal? The bottom of any circuit board has the potential of shorting out to anything conductive.