Discussions

Occasional motor 'clicking' - is this normal? (already changed motor bullets)

Posted by Paul Feely on January 16, 2011 at 4:37am

I think I know the answer to this but I'd appreciate a second opinion before stripping down...

Fah Pah ArduCopter kit, ready for first flight, everything working well except occasional 'clicks' from motor(s), can't tie it down to one motor in particular.

I've changed out the bullets on the motor side and are nice and tight now (they were all loose), wiggling wires doesn't seem to have any effect...I didn't change the connectors on the ESC side.

I've attached a mp3 of the clicking, if someone can listen and tell me if it's normal or not that would be a help.

If not normal I'll replace the connectors on the ESC side and get the the Power Distribution board out and have a look at the Deans etc - anything else that I should look at?

Many thanks, Paul

quad motor click.mp3

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Replies

T3

healthyfatboy January 18, 2011 at 6:06pm

Have you tried just soldering the ESC leads to the motor leads?
DougB January 18, 2011 at 1:36pm

Just to add to the discussion, my motors click also. Doesn't seem to effect the way it fly's, but is a little un-nerving. They shouldn't click. I would also be interested in looking into the I2C conversion.
Robert Nalesnik January 18, 2011 at 12:36pm

I have the same issue but no loss of control. Seems to cycle through all the motors. Looking into the I2C bus as mentioned before.
Peter Seddon January 17, 2011 at 10:50am

I found it disappeared when I converted my ESC's to I2C.

Peter
Heino R. Pull January 16, 2011 at 10:48am

I have this same motor clicking on multiple motors. I've replaced the bullet connectors on several motors/ESC's due to bad solder and loose fitting bullets which have caused flips (motor hesitation) on my Arducopter. I've gotten those isolated (stopping/staring motors) but the clicks remain. I just went through all of the connections and replaced the majority of my bullets on both motors and ESC, but I still get occasional clicking while on the ground and in flight. I went through my motors - one by one - and it seems to me that 3 out of the 4 motors/ESC have the clicks. I've been flying with the clicking (20 flights or so) and I have one spare ESC to swap with. I'll going to swap the ESC on the motor with the most clicks and see if I notice a difference in flight.

Heino
Paul Feely January 16, 2011 at 9:01am

Thanks for confirming it's not normal that was my main concern :(

Good suggestion Sebastian for working out which motor, I try that and hopefully be flying click free soon....
Sebastian Gralla January 16, 2011 at 6:05am

unplug 3 of the motors and check if the last motor ticks, if not, plug another one in and so on

at least it will tell you which motor is ticking

it could be a connector problem (no mechanical problem, because it's not ticking every rotation)
Overwatch January 16, 2011 at 5:48am

Whatever it is it isn't normal. You can hear the RPMs change after each click and that could have an effect on flight stability. You should definitely try to isolate the ESC+motor stack that's responsible - my guess is that it's a faulty ESC (rotor position sensing).