Kit motor almost caught fire?

Hi guys,

during my first full test flight today i'd noticed a couple of glitches, on arming the motors sometimes the rear or right wasn't spinning up. disarming and re-arming seemed to fix it. So carried on and got the quad up in the air and had a few flights around a (deserted) local park, all going well. I did have to use a fair bit of stick input to keep it from drifting off, so I thought i'd bring it back and re-attached to the configurator to verify the offsets.

On doing so - (both Lipo and USB connected) my laptop had gone to sleep so it was starting up with the USB cable attached (not sure if this is related) as soon as i came back into windows and launched the configurator the right hand motor started smoking (a lot) - loads of white smoke and a VERY hot motor.

I quickly disconnected everything and went to check the other motors. The front sounds fine, but the right is toast and the other two sound a bit sick too, certainly not as silky smooth as the front.

I can't see how anything has been misconfigured or abused, its all been connected as stock and apart from some minor trim / offset issues was flying fine.

These are the kit motors, not cheap hobbyking items, with only 20 mins or so use out of them... has anyone seen any failiures like this? should i have undertaken some "running in procedure" - obviously they were used gently at first to figure out direction etc, so they had a reasonably easy first few mins

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  • This happend to me 5 minutes ago now, after doing the cli configuration and motor testing no reactions on the motors. When calibrating the esc with cli it seemd to never stop beeping so i figured id unplug the battery and usb cable to restart it, then the one motor suddenly started knocking and smoke came out, not much but I havent even bothered testing it. Im going to solder all the cables from now on. Il do 1 test to check the motor health but im not counting on it working still.

     

    edit:was the right motor and 1 of the bullet connectors were pretty loose yes..i had tried to configure the esc manually before and had the motors running but ive been unplugging/plugging them in and out couple of times so i guess that was just luck the first time.

  • I had the same problem and solved it quickly by removing those bullet connectors and soldering the wires direct. Now not a single glitch but that was after 10 broken props and some motor mounts etc. These wires must carry a high frequency current so bad connections are not going to deal with that well.

    What connectors are available that are tight like the deans but have 3 poles???
  • Hi Guys 

    It seems to me these bullet connectors a weak point in the motor wiring system and can cause a lot of grief if not making a good connection. Chris, Jani, have you found any problems with the EC3 or XT60 type connectors. Would you recommend replacing the bullets with either of these. Does the kit come with any connectors on the power distribution board. Looking thru the photos I think I have seen all these types used.

  •  

    jp9, I had Exactly the same thing happen to my Arducopter last night. :(

     

    I had just finished the build, done CLI calibration, switched back to Configurator, and then reconnected the LiPo battery.  (No props mounted)

    Without arming, one of the motors started 'ticking' loudly, and in seconds was gushing white smoke.  I yanked the battery off quickly, and the motor spins freely, but I suspect it's toast as the windings were smokin'.  The other three are fine.

    This motor *did* have one bullet connector that wasn't firm and pulled out easier than most.  I had smushed it a little to try to make it tighter during assembly, but probably should have either solder-filled the socket a bit, added foil, or replaced the bullet connector.

    I can't see what possible signal the Arduino could send to an ESC to make it burn a motor -- so I can't blame the Configurator or any of the digital electronics.  The ESC itself wasn't even warm; just the hot motor.

    It's going to be a long holiday waiting for FahPah parts.  Are there any identical motors for sale in the US, or would I have to replace all four?   I'd love to get a maiden flight in during these days off.

     

    So two things: Make sure the bullets are tight!  I might even go through and solder all of them together.

    Second, I'm still puzzled as to why the motors energized when I had not yet armed.  Is there some interaction between USB resetting the target and signals to the ESC?  Can it spin the motors without command?

  • Developer

    Can you also check that there is no any visual damage on cables and especially on their main connection points close to motor it self.

     

    Also we would really be pleased to get that motor back so we could try to examine it and maybe find why this was happening.

     

    As long as those bullets are tight, we never seen any problems with them but yes if they are loose you might/will get some glitching on somepoint. So pinching them is always a good idea and or maybe even adding a bit of solder after initial tests has been done to see that all rotating directions are correct etc.

  • 3D Robotics
    Check that when you screwed the motors on you didn't use screws that were too long and were binding the rotor.

    We've never seen issues with motors before. The only issues that we've seen crop are with ESCs and solder joints--a motor with one of the three wires not connected will jitter and then burn out. But if the motor was spinning when it smoked, that wasn't the issue.
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