Hi, just been testing my Y6 with it's new 6000mah 4S pack and noticed the motors are getting hot. This is affecting the bottom motors more where if you touch them on the base, non rotating part, they are too hot to touch for more than a few seconds. The rest of the motor is hot but can be held without issue.
To check I did another flight with a 3S 4400mah setup and the motors were again getting hot, not as hot but the flight time was 5 mins vs 13 mins.
It's also worth noting with the 4S setup the ESCs were also getting hot, again after a 13 min test flight.
The flight itself basically consisted of a 13 minute hover in loiter mode, I was testing battery times, and consumed 5000mah. The weather for the UK was hot, 25 deg C. The Y6 is a new 2014 B version weighing 1900 grams or so, std config plus 600 gram pack, with std 10 inch props and 850 blue motors.
And finally to the question, is this normal of does something sound wrong?
The only thing I can think I haven't done is balance the props, guide for this would be handy, but I have no vibration issues looking at the data log.
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Out of interest what did you replace them with and did you have to replace the ESCs or were the 20A standards still good?
I replaced the motors with Turnigy Multistar 3525 650Kv and ESC with 30A Hobbywing Platinum to get some extra reserve.
Yes, although it is a bit too tight to the landing gear. I adjusted PIDs - that's all. Flight time on a 5A/h 4S battery is around 18-20 minutes,
I have not noticed my motors getting hot, yesterday I was flying and it was reading 108 deg on the flight controller, but I did not notice the motors hot...
The issues are correct and a larger bottom prop is correct to increase lift and deal with the dirty air I remeber the number being 20% for overlap, so ideally the bottom would be 12"
I always wonder about this, as I would think it will not be long until we have a more efficient design, I have been busy trying to sort out the Y6 while figuring out what the next setup will be to get a Flight time of 25+... Have a few set to do it but they still need improvement...
Hi James A,
I built my Y6 from parts obtained from 3DR and have run into the same problems. The upper motors are slightly warm but the lower motors are hot enough to cook eggs on them. I've queried many folks who mentioned that I should only run 10x47 top and bottom. To be honest I've tried every conceivable combination of 10x47 and 11x47 prop configurations and nothing showed any improvements. Bottom motors are fricking HOT!
I beginning to think that the design is the problem. Top props are pulling clean air through the blades but the lower blades are dealing with unstable down force of air and is working hard to achieve thrust. Sounds weird, but I feel the air density is quite a bit different between upper and lower blades. Reading further and let me caveat that I'm not engineer, but the spacing between upper blades and lower blades need to be a specific separation from each other to be affective. My guess is again that the upper and lower blades are too close and that is creating problems for the lower set.
So I'm wondering if there is a way to detune the lower motors in order to allow upper ones to pick up the work load which may help both motors to work cooler.
Oh yeah, I'm running 4s 6000 mAh batteries and will preform another set of tests on 4S and 3S batteries. If 4S is the culprit, then I may switch back to 3S.
If 3DR says you can run the y6 on either 3S or 4S batteries, then I wonder if they tested the life span and failure rate between the two types?
If the motors are still 850kv's then they likely max out spec-wise at 187-197Watts, which if you add them into a calc like ecalc, a 4S battery with a 10" prop and the weight of the Y6 is on the edge of the motor's capacity--hence gets hot. If you're continuously hitting full power, you may burn them out, otherwise hovering will be fine.
Their ESCs have plenty of bandwidth/amps, so don't worry about them. You really need a motor with 220+ watts capacity (their old 900kv motors would handle it but were heavier) for using a 4S and a 1600g RTF weight.
I did put all the sizes into ecalc after building the Y6 and was surprised at how close the estimate was to be overloading the motor, I believe it's just ok if you enter the correct 10x47 prop make and model.
Does seem a little odd, especially as 4S is the pack 3dr is now recommending.
As you say, I assume it's fine for what I'm doing and fingers crossed if I do lose any of them it will only be one at a time, and recoverable.
Thanks for the comments, as mentioned it would be nice if 3dr could give us a steer on this as to what level of hot is acceptable.
From my own experience with Helis hot isn't good, certainly not on bigger machines, but on the smaller ones can be fairly normal.
Anyway as mentioned they do recommend 4S so it should be fine.
With regards to 6.5 mins for 3000 mah fully loaded, I think that is what I would expect and is fairly similar to what I would get with additional weight.
Maybe we can get c comment from 3dr as I have only run 4s think thing this would be a better setup... But as I think of it I am running 11 " bottom props and 10" tops and with 20 amp ESCs..
I have yet to have a issue, but I would like to know if their is a issue running 4s I would be surprised as I think a 4s 6000 may batt is the recommended size...
My complaint is more air time... Mine is about 6.5 minutes fully loaded with FPV and a 1 watt 5.8 GHz TX... This burns through about 3000 mAH and I plan on adding more battery but want to make sure their are not issues
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