Hi I am pretty new to the forum and yesterday I had my first crash of my brand new Y6. I built this from scratch, and had flown it 6 times. Since the first flight I had sudden pitch movements/glitches but they went away after less than a minute of the first flight. Then yesterday during the 6th flight I had one of the motors stop rotating mid flight and I could see some smoke coming out of one of the ESCs, after the crash, and checking the ESCs, one of them smells like it burned up and the sticker seems to have some heat damage.
My question is how can I tell what happened during the flight from the logs? I can see in the current graph that normally it was consuming around 20-25A during the whole flight until the end where there is a spike to around 40 AMPS. But is there a way to tell from the logs which motor was failing?
The second question is, what should I replace? just the ESC that failed? or also the motor? Should I check the power distribution board also, and what would I check? and what about the Current sensor for the APM, to what current is that rated? is there a possibility that was damaged too?
And the final question, what could have caused the ESC to fail? I would not want to replace everything just to have it fail again in case there is something else wrong that caused the failure.
Thanks!
Replies
I agree with your assessment of an overvoltage situation for the ESC. There is a dataflash sub-log of "MOTORS" but it only records the PPM being sent to each motor over the control lead, but I do not believe it measures the actual RPM or status of the motor hardware, as it were. From my understanding if you smoked your ESC only that need be replaced, not the motor. I've done this on fixed-wing planes in any case, with no ill effects on the motor. I'd think the current sensor would be OK. Good luck man, we're with you.
What make of ESC & motor are you using?
Your issue could be the motor, connection to the motor (i.e. a short between the wires) or the ESC was just bad. I would suggest getting a new motor and ESC. If the ESC is that new, I would ask for replacement from the supplier. (or the motor if that the issue)
You can test the motor for internal shorts using a multi-meter.
The current sensor will be fine, its rated to measure up to 90A, but it can actually handle more than that.
The PDB will also be fine.
When i bought my brand new y6 i had to replace 2 ESC after 2 or 3 flights only (sudden ESC death in flight, no funny smell though, but tests showed that esc's did not work anymore), fortunately i had other esc's from another company ready, since i built in these all is good i a am having great fun.
t.