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Controller for wheel chair motors

3638 Views 5 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  Cricket, 
C
Hi!
I'm new here. I'm building a tricycle (see photos) and I'm trying to find a good controller. I scavenged two working wheel chair motors with tiny, high torque gear boxes. I only intend this contraption to move about 5mph, so huge torque is more important than speed. What can you recommend in the way of inexpensive DC motor controllers? I actually have the super cool wheel chair controller but it isn't appropriate for my needs because it faults so easily and just stops working. Low voltage? Fault. Only one motor? Fault. Motor wire loose? Fault. Unexpected amperage load? Fault.

The motors are built for a 24v system but they will spin at 12v. I haven't tried them at anything above 24v. I am looking for a motor controller that can handle 24v or 36v and a lot of amperage. I don't know the amperage of these motors but I did manage to kill at 10A PWM that I had sitting around. ;-)

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major
Cricket said:
As a follow up, does anyone think that I can go wrong trying to use a Curtis PMC SepEx DC Motor Controller 24-36v 400 Amp controller? ...
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Hi Crick,

Since you felt the need to ask, I'd say it is a bad idea to attempt to use that Curtis SepEx controller. I'm fairly certain those are PM motors, and you have 2, so it would involve a major hack to the Curtis to get it functional and require a program pendant or PC SW which cost like $800. If you were familiar with the controller, SepEx motors and had programmer access, you might have a chance. But then you would not have asked the question ;)

An older series motor type Curtis control would work for you, like the model 1204.

Regards,

major
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major
Cricket said:
If I do go with the 1204 model, what issues should I expect to deal with? Are they pretty fool proof or is there some classic "crap, it died" kind of problem that I need to look out for?
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Straight forward. RTFM :) 4 big wires & 3 little wires. I'd say as simple as it gets. Do the 2 motors in parallel.
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