WARNING! A new way for MMMs to fail including your precious V3!

[kulangflow]

[J3110]

So, yeah, this whole not enough space for the heatshrink on your connectors thing kinda bugs me.
I don't like the amount of pressure there is between the heatsink and the shrink tubing on my motor wire bullets. There will be metal on metal contact there after only a few runs...at the very least, it is something to worry about.
So, what do I do? Just wait'l something goes wrong or send it back to them asking for one that leaves anough of a gap that I don't have to worry about these connectors shorting to the heatsink?

What the hell, Castle? Nowhere during your quality checking did anyone notice this might present an issue? I mean, why would anyone wanna put shrinkwrap on their connectors? Of course people will want all 3 motor leads making contact with the same aluminum heatsink...

Think I'll see what I can manage with a scap of lexan, but I'm really getting sick of the whole Castle mantra of "fix it yourself before using".

If I wanted it to be like this, I'd be buying caps, fets and circuitboards and making my own.

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by J3110

So, yeah, this whole not enough space for the heatshrink on your connectors thing kinda bugs me.
I don't like the amount of pressure there is between the heatsink and the shrink tubing on my motor wire bullets. There will be metal on metal contact there after only a few runs...at the very least, it is something to worry about.
So, what do I do? Just wait'l something goes wrong or send it back to them asking for one that leaves anough of a gap that I don't have to worry about these connectors shorting to the heatsink?

What the hell, Castle? Nowhere during your quality checking did anyone notice this might present an issue? I mean, why would anyone wanna put shrinkwrap on their connectors? Of course people will want all 3 motor leads making contact with the same aluminum heatsink...

Think I'll see what I can manage with a scap of lexan, but I'm really getting sick of the whole Castle mantra of "fix it yourself before using".

If I wanted it to be like this, I'd be buying caps, fets and circuitboards and making my own.

Hmmmm --- Again, we checked, and checked and checked this issue--- OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. We shorted the bullets, scraped off the anozide and pushed the heatsink intot he bullets, etc. Never could we even get ONE failure to occur.

So don't berate us, we tested the hell out of this supposed "problem" and found there to not be a problem.



Besides -- I don't think the issue was a pair of bullets pushed into the heat sink -- or there would have been two bullets that showed damage. And the heat sink itself would have also have burn damage which isn't evident in the pictures. It could very well have just been a loose connector that caused that type of damage (as the male connector made poor contact, it burned the edges of the female.)

[MrMin]

Nice one Patrick. If you take a hammer to it, eventually everything will break.

I would actually cable-tie the wires down to the body so that no flex happens to the connection.

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by MrMin

Nice one Patrick. If you take a hammer to it, eventually everything will break.

I would actually cable-tie the wires down to the body so that no flex happens to the connection.

Yeah, well that's true. --

We've built about 4500 MMM V3s to date (on the machines) and finished and shipped about 1500 of 'em.

If we see failure rates above about 1%, I'll be very surprised (and I don't expect actual failure rates -- not user-induced failures -- to go above about 1/4%). We have not seen a single "It just died" BEC failure like we did on the V1 and V2, and we have yet to see a complete FET failure like we did on the V1 and V2 -- so I'm pretty confident that the V3 is going to prove to be fairly bulletproof.

[Ryu James]

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

Yeah, well that's true. --

We've built about 4500 MMM V3s to date (on the machines) and finished and shipped about 1500 of 'em.

If we see failure rates above about 1%, I'll be very surprised (and I don't expect actual failure rates -- not user-induced failures -- to go above about 1/4%). We have not seen a single "It just died" BEC failure like we did on the V1 and V2, and we have yet to see a complete FET failure like we did on the V1 and V2 -- so I'm pretty confident that the V3 is going to prove to be fairly bulletproof.

thats great to hear. thanks for taking time to let us know how things are going. My v3 seems to be holding up fine but i have noticed that my truggy seems slower since putting it in. i am sure it very well could be something else and i dont want to raise any issues but is there any type of change in the v3 that could cause my truggy to be slower than it was with the v2. also, the responsiveness is sometimes twitchy. unlike my v2s which were lightning fast and responsive. thoughts?

[Sparky]

I very thankful Castle Creations has ventured out into the 1/8 scale ESCs. It just takes a while for people to find out the all the design issues. I’m sure Castle will come up with a solid design. I personally think the V1 design was better with the wires connected directly to the ESC. I also think any fan on an ESC is a bad design. The voltage should be increased until no fan is required.

[lutach]

The male plugs should have a very snug fit when going into the female and any slop would cause such a failure. So everyone make sure your male plugs are somewhat hard to push into the female to prevent this from happening. If the male plug comes off easily, carefully spread the contacts apart a little to give you that very tight fitting.

[Ryu James]

Originally Posted by lutach

The male plugs should have a very snug fit when going into the female and any slop would cause such a failure. So everyone make sure your male plugs are somewhat hard to push into the female to prevent this from happening. If the male plug comes off easily, carefully spread the contacts apart a little to give you that very tight fitting.

all males like a tight-fitting female. well said lutach.

[J3110]

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

Hmmmm --- Again, we checked, and checked and checked this issue--- OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. We shorted the bullets, scraped off the anozide and pushed the heatsink intot he bullets, etc. Never could we even get ONE failure to occur.

So don't berate us, we tested the hell out of this supposed "problem" and found there to not be a problem.

I appreciate the response to my concern. I feel much better now(and worse, for jumping to conclusions and making that false accusation about Castle QA). :)
Honestly, I don't even know what would happen if a pair of the motor leads were to short anyways.
I had just been reading a paper on Nikola Tesla's monopolar motors and how he was incorporating aluminum in some kind of dynamo he was working on which reminded me that even though aluminum isn't magnetic, it is still conductive. But if, as you said, shorting the motor leads isn't an issue, then no worries after all.

If I scraped some of the shrink wrap from the side making contact with the heatsink, this should relieve the pressure that I am concerned about also.

Thanks again. :)