[Qer]

Originally Posted by dtbaker

Along those lines though, would it help *much* to add a heat-sink on the BOTTOM of the Soliton units?

Nope. Not one bit. The Soliton-series is, unlike some other brands, designed for optimal heat dissipation out of the box without the need for ugly cludges and other home made modifications. The heat sink is exactly where it has to be, the whole casing is designed to give optimal cooling of the transistors, empirically tested on the dyno.

However, it's extremely hard to dissipate all the heat generated from running the controller at maximum power with air only and that's why water cooling is optional in case the air cooling is not enough for your needs.

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by dtbaker

hhmmmm, I guess with relatively low volume it hasn't been cost effective to cast the enclosure and get the fins for 'free'.... or switch to straight fins that could be an extrusion.

We do use castings - and they even have the fins molded in - but they still need a lot of machining to become a final product.

Originally Posted by dtbaker

... Do you think a bottom mount heatsink would help much with a Soliton if airflow was significant?

Nope. The liquid cooling ports tell you exactly where the heat-producing components of the controllers are located and that is pretty much opposite the lid (bottom) on both of them.

[dtbaker]

Originally Posted by Tesseract

Nope. The liquid cooling ports tell you exactly where the heat-producing components of the controllers are located and that is pretty much opposite the lid (bottom) on both of them.

ok...but I am sure that MORE air, say from a duct from front grill or directed up from belly might help a little?

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by dtbaker

ok...but I am sure that MORE air, say from a duct from front grill or directed up from belly might help a little?

Well it won't hurt... though I have to admit I am a bit puzzled by your fixation on this. The Soliton1 heatsink is capable of dissipating 600-800W with the built-in fans, increasing to at least 2500W with 1gpm (4lpm) through the liquid cooling ports. In contrast, the bottom of the enclosure might contribute an additional 5W of dissipative capacity to the enclosure. Blow lots of air on it and maybe you'll bump that up to 10W. It would be impossible to notice any difference, in other words.

That said, one thing you can do to improve the performance of any controller - not just ours - is to make sure the waste heat produced by the motor doesn't affect the controller. One good way of doing that is to use an external blower to force air through the motor and ducting to redirect the hot exhaust out of the "engine" compartment (this also protects the motor from "Foreign Object Debris" (FOD) and keeps it cooler, especially if it spends a lot of time below 2000 rpm or so).

Keep in mind that the Soliton1 is ~99% efficient while a WarP-9 is 80-90% efficient (lower eff. at higher current), so the motor produces 10x-20x more waste heat than the Soliton1 on average. Not to name any names here, but in one installation I saw the Soliton1's heat exchanger mounted behind the A/C condenser. This worked fine when actually driving, but when idling at a traffic light the Soliton1's temperature would immediately start climbing - when you'd otherwise think it was barely having to work (4-8kW output). This was because mounting the heat exchanger in the engine compartment let it pick up the waste heat from the motor (and controller!?) and when the fan for the condenser kicked on it got another dose of hot air from it, too. Heat exchangers only help cool the controller if they are located *away* from other sources of heat...

[dtbaker]

Originally Posted by Tesseract

... a bit puzzled by your fixation on this. The Soliton1 heatsink is capable of dissipating 600-800W with the built-in fans, increasing to at least 2500W with 1gpm (4lpm) through the liquid cooling ports. In contrast, the bottom of the enclosure might contribute an additional 5W of dissipative capacity to the enclosure. Blow lots of air on it and maybe you'll bump that up to 10W. It would be impossible to notice any difference, in other words.

That said, one thing you can do to improve the performance of any controller - not just ours - is to make sure the waste heat produced by the motor doesn't affect the controller. One good way of doing that is to use an external blower to force air through the motor and ducting to redirect the hot exhaust out of the "engine" compartment ...the motor produces 10x-20x more waste heat than the Soliton1 on average.

...great info...
I just tend to ask a lot of questions when in planning phase. I'd like to seal up the belly and grill for aero, and want to make sure I direct enough cool air where it needs to go and leave enough 'exhaust' space to get it to flow.

[GerhardRP]

Originally Posted by Tesseract

The limit is more like 170V to 190V; depending on time, current and commutator temperature, and not just the number of commutator segments. Finding out the *exact* commutation limit for various conditions entails destroying motors, which are invariably denied coverage under their "warranty" so this is very expensive data to obtain.

That said, most modern programmable controllers let you limit the maximum voltage seen by the motor so that a much higher battery voltage can be safely used. If this function didn't work in our controllers we would have zorched the WarP-9s on our dyno a long time ago!

Damn day job keeps me from finishing and sharing my analysis of the Electrabishi. Here are some results that show that my DC motor model http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums...del-39931.html can recognize comm failure before the motor is vaporized. Basically I use the motor saturation curve with the motor current and RPM to calculate the motor voltage. Commutation failure is signalled by a motor voltage that is too high as you can see on the attached graphs.
Tess or Qer, If you have a Soliton dump from a dyno run that ends with a zorched motor, I would see what we can learn from it.
Gerhard

[JonB]

Hi All, JonB here,

Busy converting a FWD 1/2 ton utility to EV, looking for all sorts of bits. Anyone know where i could source Soliton Controllers, throttle controls, etc here in South Africa.

Cheers

[Tesseract]

We don't have a dealer in Africa... If a reputable company were to approach us about being a dealer there we'd welcome it, but so far the only inquiries we've gotten from Africa have been from this deranged Nigerian who wants to send us an overly large cashier's cheque for a controller and have us refund the difference... "seems legit"

[athlon]

HI , I have a question for you .. why are you using an Ethernet port instead of serial comunication.

I like the ethernet ( I'm a webmaster so for me web based is the best) but a lot of people prefer serial or Can

[somanywelps]

Originally Posted by athlon

HI , I have a question for you .. why are you using an Ethernet port instead of serial comunication.

All laptops have ethernet. Virtually no laptops have serial anymore.