ESCs fail within minutes of replacing them

H

Helgso

Member
Hey all.

My first custom built quadcopter uses the following components:
* ZMR 250 frame - 3mm carbon fiber
* FS-ia6b receiver
* 4x EMAX 2205 2300kv motors
* 4 x 20amp Little Bees ESCs
* Naze rev5 flight controller board
* Mini Power Distribution Board for Naze 5&12V BEC

I flashed the Naze with the latest Beta Flight and configured it through Clean Flight. I flashed the latest Beta Flight on the ESCs, synced them etc and got the drone flying for a couple of minutes. No software issues.

During flight I noticed connectivity issues (drone would suddenly lose power in mid air etc). I realized some of my soldering was improper on the naze (bad soldering of the connections that power the Naze). Then, as I fixed the connections at home, the South-West ESC's motor started stuttering all the time during testing. I replaced it and the new one didn't stutter its motor anymore. However, after minutes of flying the second replaced South-West ESC started stuttering its motor again. I replaced it for the third time. That new ESC broke again after within a minute of flying and stopped spinning its motor at all.

What's wrong? Did my Naze go bad because of bad soldering and it needs to be replaced? All the parts I used were new.

Thanks a lot!
 
Were your motors (or anything else) getting hot to the touch? Also, what size batteries and props are you using?
 
Yes, after the ESCs in question stopped working they would start getting extremely hot seconds after plugging in the battery to the power distribution board. I'm using the Dalprop 5045 and the battery Tattu 1300mah 75c 3s
 
I has a similar problem with basically the same setup. Put on some 5030 2-blade props and see if that helps. If so, move up to 5040. If it's still OK, try 5040 3-blade. Might be as far as you can go, as 5045 is pretty extreme and makes the motors work very hard. One other thing, make sure your ESCs are set on dampedlight in BLHeliSuite, not high.
 
Just wondering though, why the ESCs are heating up as soon you power them up. Are you 100% positive you chose the correct .hex file when you flashed them? (Same if you've flashed multishot onto them)
 
Oh, the ESCs that eventually failed would only overheat after they failed. When they worked they stayed cool after plugging in the battery.

When I flashed BLHeli to my Naze32, I got the latest hex from here for my Naze32: https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/releases

I flashed the hex with CleanFlight, ran BLHeliSuite and had it check if all the ESCs were up to date. They weren't, so I BLHeliSuite update them to 14.8. I can't remember what the version of the BLHeli hex was from Github that I flashed at the time on my Naze32.

The ESCs were set to DampedLight so I guess the only thing I can try now is reflash the Naze32 with the latest BLHeli hex, replace the faulty ESC, update them all to the latest version via BLHeliSuite, replace my props and hope for the best.

Do you think I could have any luck in replacing the Naze32 with a new one?
 
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