Esc burned up

[Fk167]

I'm a newbie and just finished building a Tarot 450 Pro V2 kit I purchased from Mircale Mart. The build included a hobby king pentinum 40a ESC, Tarot 450m 3800kv, Ziggy 3s 2200ma LiPo. I had finally tried my maiden flight yesterday. After several times of lifting off the ground for maybe few minutes. I stopped for a few minutes. When I tried again, I could not get enough power to lift off. The motor finally stopped and smoke came pouring out under the canopy. I found that the ESC was fried. I would appreciate any help, in what are possible causes and recommendations going forward

[CBR240]

I'm not one of the most knowledgeable here, so take this for what little it is worth.

It's always possible the ESC was just defective.

I think more likely there is quite a bit of drag somewhere in your Heli. Does it spin freely? Too much load will heat ESC, motor and battery. Could be binding somewhere or a bad bearing. I don't know if excessive pitch could load it bad enough to fry your ESC. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will comment.

When my boys were burning up RC Truck motors, I got our first Infrared Temperature Gauge, such as:
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXEMG5&P=ML
We have a few of these. I have my boys check their ESC, motor, and battery at end of each pack, or at any time something is "not right". I use one on my Helicopters frequently. It is great to really know how hot things are getting. And you can even use it to check servo temperature. I have actually been able to see my tail servo get hotter as my tail on my 250 develops slop, and pick a problem servo out of my collective servos as it was getting quite warm while the other two were fine.

Good luck with it, these things are complicated and it takes more learning and effort than many hobbies.

[Jumna]

+1

Also, the motor could have shorted and taken the esc out. Check the resistance between phases and see if they are balanced too. Also, check the battery and make sure you didn't take it below 3.7V per cell, since that could cause the esc to undervoltage trip, tho it's not supposed to smoke anyways.

Seems like the seller should be responsible for replacing the esc or esc+motor as it was a maiden flight electronics failure without a crash first.

[JohnCrashes]

Did your heli look like this? The ESC caught fire and it trashed the motor as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sefrez]

Originally Posted by JohnCrashes

Did your heli look like this? The ESC caught fire and it trashed the motor as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Incredibly familiar. Those could have been my photos. Dominator went down and I didn't activate throttle hold. The ESC put loads of current through the motor and both were fried. Smells like S%!#, right?

[JohnCrashes]

Smells awful. I'm just happy that I saved the capopy, which is scorched badly on the inside, but ok outside. The ESC tray is in rough shape too, but since the clip that holds the battery tray still works, I decided to hold on to it as well.

I hope to have it back in the air this weekend. Good luck with yours.