Quark 125 Torque Setting?

[jhautz]

I figured Id post this so you others out there that are not happy w/ the temps on their quarks can see if it helps.

I just called Quark to ask them exactly what the torque setting does. They told me that it was just an electronic circut that basicaly just limits the spool up speed of the motor. Its meant as a drive train saver of sorts. And while yes, it will do some to reduce the amp draw, it probably will not have a big effect on reducing the heat in the esc.

After talking w/ him and going through my setup he did make a couple sugestions to help reduce the heat generated.

1) Change to lower Torque setting. I was running Dyanamic.
2) Change my battery type setting to Lipo Normal. I was running Lipo High. He sugested that this should help reduce the heat. It will basically cap the amps that it will allow the system to draw. He also said it would extend run time significantly. I asked him about the NiMH high setting and he said the same thing. If you are running setup inNiMH High and having heat problems to set it to NiMH normal.

I wonder how much effect all of this will have on the performance. Ive kinda gotten used to having earth ripping power on tap.

[BrianG]

Cool information jhautz!

That all makes sense when you think about it. Reducing the torque to a lower setting will gradually apply max power over a longer time reducing that huge spike of current at a standstill or heavy acceleration. Electric motors are known for a large inrush current when starting up which is why you see capacitors on a lot of AC motors. I wonder how far this torque delay setting would have to be increased to act like a Nitro? :005:

The battery high setting sounds like it just uncaps the current so the motor will draw as much as it wants, while the battery normal setting sounds like it acts like a sort of current limiter.

An ESC simply outputs a series of pulses whose duty cycle ("on" time to "off" time ratio) increases as the throttle is applied. The heat comes from the relatively tiny amount of time (probably measured in microseconds, if not nanoseconds) it takes for each of those pulses to go from their "on" state to their "off" state (called slew rate) since heat comes from voltage drop X current. Faster switching FETs (not to be confused with switching frequency) will switch faster and generate less heat. Anyway, adding a current cap with battery high/normal setting should really help reduce temps overall, while changing the throttle response will help curb heat somewhat if doing a lot of stops/starts and hard acceleration.