Motor brakes or mechanical?

[E-Revonut]

I don't want to start a war here but I just checked ShaunJohnson's profile. He is 16 and by the looks of it the only thing he has with BL is a VXL Rustler and he only joined the forum in November. Most likely he has missed a lot of the technical information that has been provided by Patrick and doesn't have to much experience with high powered BL systems. Of course this is all speculation on my part but as I already stated I will take patrick's word that regenative braking is used. Also I'm sure that a prius uses regenative braking as well. I built DC motors for 5 years, 5"-11" armature diameter brushed motors. The company I worked for was pretty small at about 12 employees so I was pretty well kept in the loop about what was going on ( I was one of the first few employees that helped get the company going) We also dealt with controllers for these motors, most of what we did was for golf carts and neighborhood electric cars such as GEM cars and all of them used regenative braking!

Sorry for hijacking the thread, sort of! But essentially ESC brakes should give longer runtimes because braking puts some energy back into the battery. No matter how small this amount is it is still better than a servo that will take energy to brake.

[shaunjohnson]

ok u got me
i was basing my info from large scale brushless/induction motors.
but do that little test with brushed motor...it's a good one ;)
i must have been wrong

[E-Revonut]

Originally Posted by shaunjohnson

ok u got me
i was basing my info from large scale brushless/induction motors.
but do that little test with brushed motor...it's a good one ;)
i must have been wrong

rather than your test why don't you hook a lightbulb up to the motor and turn it with a drill and see what happens! Then tell me what happens with the energy that gets created by braking.

[shaunjohnson]

yes there is energy being created there.
but the voltage generated has to be more than the lipo's pack voltage to be doing any charging. right?

so if u have a 4s lipo the motor regeration has to be (after going through any conersions and stuff through the ESC) 14.8+v

you will get more "load" by shorting the 2 tabs on the BRUSHED motor and hence more braking than what you will if you had surplus and wanted to regenerate.
so braking power must be wasted by heat. right?

no i'm not looking for a war either..and no patric is not wrong..i am

[George16]

Originally Posted by E-Revonut

rather than your test why don't you hook a lightbulb up to the motor and turn it with a drill and see what happens! Then tell me what happens with the energy that gets created by braking.

First Law of Energy (First Law of Thermodynamics):

Energy is neither created or destroyed. It can only transform from one form to another .

Edit- I "seem" to run longer using motor brakes than mechanical brakes though the test trucks are different. My ST-RR uses motor brakes while my Revo uses mech brakes but both use the same motor and batteries.